The ‘Deeper Learning Digest’ is a bi-weekly roundup of articles, blog posts, and other content around deeper learning. Make sure to add High School Soup to your RSS feed to stay up-to-date on all deeper learning news. Please be sure to follow @deeperlearning on Twitter for more on deeper learning.

Implementing Deeper Learning in the classroom starts with equipping school and district leaders with the ‘know-how’ to create deeper learning environments, that’s according to a new report released jointly today from Getting Smart and Digital Promise. Preparing Leaders for Deeper Learning, the fourth installment of a series of reports, asserts that educators who engage in the same blended, competency-based, and deeper learning experiences as their students are the ones who will create the powerful learning environments of the future. Preparing Leaders describes 10 roles required of educators who wish to lead toward deeper learning, including: Change Managers, Conversation Leaders, Advocates for All Students, and Design Thinkers.

Every day is a day for a #DLfie celebration. That was especially true the week of May 25. Teachers, students, and education leaders were encouraged to take to Twitter to post selfies and share what they were doing to celebrate deeper learning. Aaron Brengard, principal of Karen Smith Elementary School in San Jose, CA, tweeted;

A gold panning experience designed by @KSmithFourth for 4th graders from other schools #DLFie @karmstrongPBL @pookyy pic.twitter.com/kPY7hoYH2T

— Aaron Brengard (@brengard) May 28, 2015

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The Daily Dish digs deeper into one of the day’s top news stories on K–12 education. Make sure to add High School Soup to your RSS feed for all the latest updates and follow the Alliance on Twitter at @All4Ed for more education news.

The number of school-aged youth living in poverty in the United States is on the rise, according to a new report released Thursday by the National Center for Education Statistics Institute for Education Sciences. The Condition of Education 2015, an annual report meant to inform members of Congress, is a summary of the “important developments and trends in education.” The data in the report is collected across 42 key indicators of education trends recognized throughout U.S. public and private K-12 schools as well as higher education institutions.

According to the report, 1 in 5 school-aged children lived in poverty in 2013, up for 1 in 7 in 2000. As The Huffington Post’s Rebecca Klein points out, poverty is often associated with low academic achievement and the report notes the upward trend is having a negative effect on students in the classroom, writing:

“Teachers reported that kindergarten students from affluent households in the 2010-2011 school year were more likely to have positive approaches to learning than those whose families live below the poverty line…”

In a recent event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan asked high school students of color what the U.S. Department of Education (ED) could do to help students graduate from high school. One African-American female student explained that the lack of mentoring programs in high schools is a huge problem.

She said, “I think that all high schools should have a mentoring program. I have a mentor and she helped me stay on track. A lot of kids don’t have motivation or have someone to push them, they can’t look up to anybody because they are on the same level as someone else.”

As an immigrant student who grew up in a community that did not adhere to the concept of a postsecondary education, I know firsthand the importance of a good mentor. But the lack of academic advisors and mentors is not a problem solely facing undocumented and immigrant high school students. It’s a problem faced across the country by students of different backgrounds regardless of their legal status.

The Daily Dish digs deeper into one of the day’s top news stories on K–12 education. Make sure to add High School Soup to your RSS feed for all the latest updates and follow the Alliance on Twitter at @All4Ed for more education news.

Linked Learning pathways afford students the opportunity to participate in rigorous academics and work-based learning which in turn allows them to graduate high school with the skills and confidence to succeed in college, career and life.

Thousands of students in California have been given the chance to explore various professional fields, benefitting in the long run from what Linked Learning has to offer. As Michelle Maitre put it in an article for EdSource,

“Research has shown that students feel more engaged in school when they are able to see the connection between their studies and real-world applications, such as how what they’re learning in the classroom will benefit them after graduation.”

The Daily Dish digs deeper into one of the day’s top news stories on K–12 education. Make sure to add High School Soup to your RSS feed for all the latest updates and follow the Alliance on Twitter at @All4Ed for more education news.

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are rooted in the concept of engaging every student in the same rigorous curriculum in order for those students are prepared for college and career. In a blog for the Education Writers Association, The Denver Post’s Eric Gorski tells the stories of a few teachers in Colorado who see the promise in implementing the standards, writing:

“In all the political noise surrounding the Common Core and aligned tests, what is often drowned out are ground-level voices describing how they have changed classroom instruction and school life. Teachers, principals and school communities have been adjusting – often on the fly – to a dramatic shift in thinking.” 

The Daily Dish digs deeper into one of the day’s top news stories on K–12 education. Make sure to add High School Soup to your RSS feed for all the latest updates and follow the Alliance on Twitter at @All4Ed for more education news.

Implementing Deeper Learning in the classroom starts with equipping school and district leaders with the ‘know-how’ to create deeper learning environments, that’s according to a new report released jointly today from Getting Smart and Digital Promise. Preparing Leaders for Deeper Learning, the fourth installment of a series of reports, asserts that educators who engage in the same blended, competency-based, and deeper learning experiences as their students are the ones who will create the powerful learning environments of the future.  

The following blog post is another in the Alliance’s “Core of the Matter” blog series focusing on the implementation of the Common Core State Standards and struggling students. It was written by Nancy Gardner,  a National Board Certified Teacher and Senior English at Mooresville High School in Mooresville, North Carolina.

Several years ago, my teaching colleagues and I used alternative texts for struggling students. For example, we would read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in our honors classes, while our regular classes read a simplified version. Not only were these texts much shorter in length, but the syntax and vocabulary were not as challenging. (The font was even bigger). We thought this was differentiating instruction and helping students—but it actually hurt them by widening the gap between those who could, and those who couldn’t, master critical reading skills.

But all that changed once my colleagues and I were introduced to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).

The Daily Dish digs deeper into one of the day’s top news stories on K–12 education. Make sure to add High School Soup to your RSS feed for all the latest updates and follow the Alliance on Twitter at @All4Ed for more education news.

Despite recent statistics that indicate a lower attrition rate in the profession, some schools and districts still struggle to fill teaching positions.

In a recent article from the Northwest Herald, Chelsea McDougall examines how one school district in Illinois struggles to fill positions for some of its more challenging and alternative courses. Woodstock Community Unit School District 200 in Illinois is just one district in the state feeling the effects of declining enrollment in college and university education programs. Woodstock specifically feels the shortage in specialty positions such as its Chinese language program and sciences, mathematics, and advanced placement courses.

On May 14, the Alliance for Excellent Education was honored to host an amazing delegation of Linked Learning practitioners to meet with federal policy makers in Washington, D.C. The purpose of the trip was two-fold: First, we wanted to educate policy makers on the power and promise of Linked Learning – an approach to high school reform implemented across California that combines college-focused academics, work-based learning, and integrated student supports. The second purpose of the trip was to have the lessons learned from Linked Learning inform the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), currently pending before Congress. The Alliance sees Linked Learning as a sterling example of high school reform 2.0.

The ‘Deeper Learning Digest’ is a bi-weekly roundup of articles, blog posts, and other content around deeper learning. Make sure to add High School Soup to your RSS feed to stay up-to-date on all deeper learning news. Please be sure to follow @deeperlearning on Twitter for more on deeper learning.

A student’s academic learning should be only part of an educator’s focus to improve achievement. According to a new study from the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (SCOPE), an additional focus on social emotional learning (SEL) benefits all students and is especially critical for low-income students and students of color. Social Emotional Learning in High School: How Three Urban High Schools Engage, Educate, and Empower Youth examines how three small, diverse schools improved student engagement and academic achievement by implementing social emotional learning school-wide.

In a post for Education Week’s Learning Deeply blog, MarYam G. Hamedani, associate director of Stanford University’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, writes of the study’s findings, saying: “Failing to meet students’ psychological, social, and emotional needs will continue to fuel gaps in opportunity and achievement for students…who are frequently underserved by the large one-size-fits-all schools they attend.”