As part of Bellwether’s new series of briefs, From Pandemic to Progress, Allison Crean Davis makes the case to establish a national Institute for Education Improvement (an IEI), stating the need for continuous improvement across the American education system. Davis says, “If the U.S. education sector is to dramatically improve outcomes for students, it needs large-scale, consistent, and sustained organizational support for continuous improvement.”

David Paunesku is the Executive Director of PERTS, a center he co-founded at Stanford University. PERTS helps educators apply insights from the psychological sciences to improve students’ educational experiences and outcomes. He coauthored “A Brief Intervention to Encourage Empathic Discipline Cuts Suspension Rates in Half Among Adolescents” (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).

Laura Wentworth is the Director of Research Practice Partnerships at California Education Partners. Since 2009, she has directed the partnership between Stanford University and San Francisco Unified School District. Her research interests focus on school district reform and research–practice partnership effectiveness.

Until my recent appointment to the Illinois Senate, I was the secretary of the Illinois State Board of Education. That means I was a member of the board at the time we adopted the Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards. You may have heard about these standards in the news.

The General Assembly’s Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, or JCAR, is expected to take up the issue Tuesday...

Sanya was a Research Analyst at the UChicago Consortium on School Research, where she conducted data analysis and created resources for students, teachers, and administrators in CPS. Before coming to the UChicago Consortium, Sanya worked as a research assistant at Beyond Schools Lab, where she helped plan, conduct, and analyze qualitative research on middle school students' understandings of consent in the hopes of creating early sexual assault and harrassment prevention programs.

"Principal Leadership Practices, Organizational Improvement, and Student Achievement" is chapter 13 of Exploring Principal Development and Teacher Outcomes: How Principals Can Strengthen Instruction, Teacher Retention, and Student Achievement, edited by Peter Youngs, Jihyun Kim, and Madeline Mavrogordato .  The full book is available from Routledge.

The annual 5Essentials survey is launching today, giving students, parents, and teachers a unique opportunity to have a voice in improving their schools.

The survey — available at this link now through Feb. 26 — is administered every spring and helps schools better understand areas of strength and weakness in five essential areas critical for school success...