R&D Alert Archived Articles
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Filling a Need: Professional Development for Charter School Teachers
Teachers and administrators in independent charter schools tend to wear multiple hats and have enormous workloads. Most independent charters are small. Many are geographically isolated. And a good number are struggling financially.
All too often, opportunities for high-quality professional development in this context are minimal or nonexistent. Charter School Teachers Online is working to advance professional development opportunities for charter school teachers.
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Early Childhood Mental Health: Raising Awareness, Taking Action
This article examines how the California Center for Infant-Family and Early Childhood Mental Health has developed evidence-based practices that focus on assessing the state of the infant-parent relationship and working with families to strengthen it.
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Leadership Development: A Systems Approach
A strong leader may be instrumental in starting to turn around a low-performing school, but it takes a systems approach to ensure the transformation is sustainable.
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Surveys Rally Communities to Support and Protect Kids
The motivation behind the California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS) and its partner, the California School Climate Survey, is to give schools a tool to turn troubling statistics into projects and programs that serve students' emotional, social, health, and safety needs and improve school climate. Download the article to learn more about CHKS, nationally recognized as a leading tool for the assessment of youth resilience.
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Interactive Lab Brings Chemistry to (Virtual) Life
An interactive virtual high school chemistry laboratory is drawing students into the inquiry process at the heart of chemistry and presenting them with interesting, real-life problems to solve.
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Common Core and Low-Performing Students
The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) provide an opportunity to change education practices to turn around the performance of student groups most in need of improvement.
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Science Learning for Teachers That Improves Students’ Achievement
Professional development programs can document a positive impact on participating teachers, but does it make any difference for students? According to several rigorous research studies analyzing WestEd's Making Sense of SCIENCE professional development, the answer is a resounding yes.
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In Crime Prevention, What Is Best for Young People?
Formal System Processing of Juveniles: Effects on Delinquency compares the crime-deterrent effectiveness when young offenders were processed through the official juvenile justice system or dealt with in an alternative way. The data show that the young people who went through the system were more likely to commit subsequent crimes than those assigned to a diversion program with services. Get the scoop.
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“Doing What Works” Bridges Research and Practice
Doing What Works is an online wealth of high-quality, practical tools that school leaders, service providers, and university faculty can use, particularly for planning and conducting their own professional learning.
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A Family-Centered Approach to Early Intervention
Tens of thousands of children are served each year by California Early Start, a statewide system that provides intervention services to infants and toddlers with disabilities and their families. Find out more about Early Start.
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Factoring Principals Into School Improvement
Policymakers rarely focus on the role of the school principal when examining ways to improve public education. Yet research shows that, next to the teacher, the principal has the strongest influence on student learning, particularly in high-poverty schools.
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Cracking the Code for Academic Literacy
Reading Apprenticeship®, a model of academic literacy developed by WestEd's Strategic Literacy Initiative, helps teachers use and explain the reading comprehension strategies distinctive to each content area. Find out more about Reading Apprenticeship in this free download.
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Putting the Needs of Children in Foster Care on the Education Research Agenda
Children in foster care move like shadows through the school system, but they leave indelible marks. Largely ignored by the education community, as a group they've had consistently dismal education outcomes.
A promising initiative is poised to change those circumstances. Ready to Succeed, a project born of the former California Collaborative for Children in Foster Care, aims to spotlight the education needs of children in foster care to find ways to support their success.
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Learning From Experience: The Indiana Institute for School Leadership Teams
In almost any recipe for school improvement, leadership is a key ingredient. And yet districts across the country continue to struggle with chronically low-performing schools in need of more effective leadership.
How can dynamic leaders be developed and their skills harnessed to make a difference for the schools most in need?
For answers, a new institute in Indiana has taken a direct approach: Ask the principals who've already succeeded.
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Multi-Level Support for Early Educators
WestEd's Comprehensive Approaches to Raising Educational Standards (CARES) has become a robust model of collaborative, data-driven support, constantly reevaluating needs and evolving to better serve local early educators. The benefits are both systemic and personal.
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