New study finds strong school climate key to effective early learning

A new study says programs with strong organizational structures hold the key to effective early-childhood education, and lists exceptional administrators and collaborative teachers as the two most important components of those structures.

The study was conducted by researchers with the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research (UChicago Consortium) and the Ounce of Prevention Fund, or Ounce, a Chicago-based nonprofit that advocates for and provides high-quality early-childhood education...

To keep high school students on track, there’s no time like the beginning

Ten years ago, Elizabeth Dozier, an assistant principal at Harper High School in an impoverished Chicago neighborhood, took a big risk. She hung a giant board in the main hallway showing each ninth-grader’s academic progress under three headings: green for on-track, yellow for close to on-track and red for off-track.

That was a violation of Chicago school board policy. Many educators and parents would have been aghast to see students publicly labeled like that...

School attendance is key

When I was a prekindergarten teacher, my young students always provided an exciting share of challenges. There were children who cried when their parents left in the morning and those who were always last to be picked up. There were loud children and shy children, potty mishaps, and naptimes that left me exhausted. But the issues that concerned me most weren’t the things that happened inside my classroom, but what happened outside – especially when children regularly missed days of school.

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