For additional information, please contact Rudy Careaga, Asst. Director of Programs at rcareaga@nea.org

NEA Foundation Reports

Peer Assistance and Review: All Teachers on the Road to Instructional Leadership in Columbus (OH) “100% Project Schools”

Most professions have mechanisms in place to ensure that their practitioners know and carry out the highest standards of practice. Teacher peer assistance and review programs (PAR) are just such a mechanism in public education: teachers observe, support and assess the quality of practice and professional growth of their peers. This Issues Brief provides a snapshot of an NEA Foundation-funded PAR program in Columbus, OH, where teachers have led the way in achieving higher standards of professional practice and corresponding results for students.

Expanding Learning Opportunities to Close the Achievement Gaps: Lessons from Union-District Collaboration

Through expanded learning opportunities (ELOs), time is being reconsidered in districts across the nation to improve student learning and increase teaching effectiveness in support of 21st century learning goals. Given the relative newness of many of ELO programs and activities, a thin research base exists about how effective ELOs are spearheaded, developed, administered and governed. The cases and analyses presented in the NEA Foundation’s newest report, Expanding Learning Opportunities to Close the Achievement Gaps: Lessons from Union-District Collaborations, provide examples of ELO programs that have been jointly designed and collaboratively operated by leaders from the school district, teachers' unions and community.

Parent/Teacher Home Visits: Creating a Bridge between Parents and Teachers as Co-Educators in Springfield, MA and Seattle, WA

Parent-teacher home visits—virtually unheard of a decade ago—are rapidly gaining national attention. They are proving to be a way of deepening trust and relationships among teachers, parents and students, and helping teachers better understand the unique academic and other needs of all of their students. This NEA Foundation Issues Brief tells the powerful story of parent-teacher home visits in two of the Foundation’s Closing the Achievement Gaps Initiative sites—Seattle, WA and Springfield, MA.

Publications

• Human Capital: Unions and School Districts Collaborating To Close Achievement Gaps examines the collaborative development of systems to improve the knowledge and skills of public school educators and leaders.
• Reducing the Achievement Gap through District/Union Collaboration: The Tale of Two School Districts, by the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, explores the power of collaboration between local unions’ and districts’ efforts to close the achievement gaps.
  
• Connecting the Bits provides information for integrating technology into teaching and learning in K-12 schools.
• Creating a Teacher Mentoring Program outlines issues and questions that school districts, teacher associations, and universities should consider when developing mentor programs.
• Creating Teacher-Led Professional Development Centers identifies guiding questions and issues to consider when designing teacher-led professional development centers.
• Engaging Public Support for Teachers' Professional Development outlines issues that education employees and advocates should consider when preparing a public engagement effort.
• Using Data about Classroom Practice and Student Work to Improve Professional Development for Educators examines how data analysis can be the focus of teacher learning and how it can help guide sound decision-making about professional development.
• Using Data to Improve Teacher Induction Programs investigates an essential, yet often overlooked, aspect of teacher induction: data collection and analysis to determine results. It also examines the roles that unions, together with school districts and their partners, can play to improve induction programs through better use of data and other strategies.