A Denver Public Schools initiative enables students to develop solutions to real-world issues ranging from race, restorative justice, and building healthy relationships with the police department, to water conservation. As part of the DPS Challenge 5280, students work to improve their communities through engaging with each other and local leaders. The program fosters creativity and collaboration and helps students to strengthen their leadership skills. The Denver Post has more.

Republicans and Democrats continue to battle over “supplement, not supplant,” an esoteric but important provision in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) that governs the use of Title I funds. The most recent debate took place during a September 21 hearing held by the House Education and the Workforce Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education.

Bipartisan consensus is difficult to achieve—especially with a presidential election right around the corner—but the U.S. House of Representatives did just that on September 13, when it passed the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21^st Century Act by a vote of 405–5. The bill rewrites the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act (Perkins), which provides more than $1.1 billion in federal education funds for middle schools, high schools, and postsecondary education.

Last week’s fatal shootings in Tulsa and Charlotte as well as those from this summer in Baton Rouge, St. Paul, and Dallas expose the tragic consequences that racial bias and poor community-police relationships can have on efforts to keep communities safe. These high-profile incidents highlight what numerous research studies, media investigations, and court rulings already have shown—that a person’s race often influences the experience he or she has with authorities.

During the next two to three years, the education community increasingly will focus on deeper learning approaches, according to the 2016 K–12 Horizon Report developed by the New Media Consortium (NMC) and the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN). The annual report shares trends, changes, and important developments in education technology and is meant to aid school leaders with their strategic technology planning. According to the report, more school communities will emphasize critical thinking, collaboration, and self-directed learning, allowing students to understand how their education fits into their lives through problem-, project-, or inquiry-based learning. THE Journal reports: https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/09/15/newest-nmccosn-horizon-k12-report-emphasizes-kids-as-creators.aspx.

On September 12, U.S. Secretary of Education John King; Cecilia Muñoz, assistant to the president and director of the White House Domestic Policy Council; and other senior Obama administration officials joined state and school district leaders, educators, philanthropists, students, parents, and others during the second annual “White House Summit on Next Generation High Schools” to share efforts to transform the high school experience and better personalize learning for all students. The Alliance for Excellent Education staff (shown in picture above) played a key role by leading a breakout session on personalized learning and technology and preparing toolkits for school leaders on how to use the Every Student Succeeds Act to transform their high schools, particularly for traditionally underserved students.

The number of teachers of color in the public schools has doubled since the 1980s, but that growth in teacher diversity has not kept pace with the growing diversity of K–12 students. Although states and local school districts have invested substantially in efforts to hire and retain more teachers of color, recruitment and retention strategies alone are insufficient to close the growing “diversity gap” between the proportion of teachers and students of color in the nation’s schools, according to a new report from the Brookings Institution and the National Council on Teacher Quality. Instead of focusing solely on the current teacher workforce, efforts to diversify the teaching profession must build the future workforce as well by increasing college graduation rates for students of color and convincing more of those college graduates to become teachers, the report explains.

It is with deep sadness that I report the passing of Lilo Leeds on Sunday, September 4. A strong and unrelenting advocate for children, Lilo cofounded the Alliance for Excellent Education (the Alliance) in 2001 with her husband Gerard “Gerry” Leeds, who passed away in 2014.

Like her husband, Lilo was a committed and passionate advocate for traditionally underserved children. In addition to the Alliance, Lilo and Gerry founded the Institute for Student Achievement, Schott Foundation for Public Education, and other initiatives that advocate for students of color, students from low-income families, and other traditionally underserved children.

The concept of social and emotional learning (SEL) has grown within the education field as a means of preparing students adequately for college and a career. Although the exact definition of SEL varies, SEL generally refers to how students “manage emotions and deal with traumas in order to persist in their academic work.”  SEL is just as important as knowing how to interpret informational text and is a necessary foundation for students to experience deeper learning in the classroom.

As students return to their classrooms, there are certain conversations schools must be prepared to have. In the wake of this summer’s tragedies in Baton Rouge, Dallas, and suburban St. Paul and growing racial tensions across the United States, the landscape of both civil rights and education have been altered permanently. In response, schools and communities must find a way to keep the classroom meaningful and relevant to the students who watched these injustices unfold firsthand or across the national media.