Project Zero is an educational think tank at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Over almost 60 years, Project Zero has endured and grown, creating many frameworks to support teachers in moving away from a transmission model of teaching to encourage deep thinking and understanding in students. Over three years, Ellen Winner of Project Zero investigated the impact of these frameworks on teachers via in-depth interviews with over 200 teachers in 57 countries. Results showed that teachers consistently changed their practice, transforming their classrooms into inquiry-driven, active learning spaces. Four factors proved important in fomenting change: experiencing the framework firsthand at Project Zero’s summer institute; buy-in of multiple teachers within a school; dedicated time for teachers to reflect together about their changes in practice; and strong support from school leaders.
In this regular Kappan column, Starr Sackstein responds to educators’ work-related questions. An aspiring teacher feels discouraged when veteran teachers tell classroom horror stories. She wants to find a way to tell them respectfully that their comments are off-putting to new and aspiring educators.
Kappan asked educators, researchers, school leaders, and advocates to share what they believe schools should change, strengthen, and carry into the future. Contributors called attention to artificial intelligence, literacy, career-connected learning, teacher preparation, student voice, educator working conditions, and the need to reconsider how schools prepare young people for work, citizenship, and life. Their responses repeatedly mentioned the human experience of learning. They wrote about teachers who know their students and believe in their potential; about relationships, belonging, curiosity, mentorship, agency, and community.
Current top-down school accountability systems do not consider the public’s perspectives or allow for meaningful public input. At the same time, public trust in civic institutions is declining, threatening both public education and American democracy. Derek Gottlieb and Jack Schneider suggest that juries provide a model for rendering democratic judgments, which might be applied beyond the courtroom. They propose a school jury system for accountability in which randomly selected teachers, parents, students, and community members come together annually to deliberate about how well their school is fulfilling its mission. Such a jury-based approach would make accountability more responsive to the public’s actual concerns while also promoting democratic values.
This article by Thomas Guskey seeks to bring clarity, insight, and coherence to the current fragmentation surrounding standards-based approaches to grading reform. Drawing on the foundational work of early scholars and researchers in the grading reform movement, it presents a concise definition of standards-based grading and other key terms essential to its implementation. The article then identifies specific prerequisites that research indicates must be established before standards-based reforms are introduced to ensure more consistent and reliable grading practices. By establishing shared terminology and acknowledging these critical conditions for implementation, the article aims to support more effective grading reform efforts that produce enduring benefits for students, parents, teachers, and school leaders alike.
