Expert Perspectives


5 Ways K–12 Educators Can Empower Girls to Consider STEM

Women hold just 28 percent of jobs in STEM fields in the U.S., and the disparity starts long before women get to college. Here are 5 ways that K–12 educators can encourage girls to pursue STEM education and explore STEM career fields before they get to college.

4 Hands-On STEAM Projects that Also Teach Other Skills

Here are four fun, engaging STEAM projects that help educators and learners make the most of being in the same physical space together — and also reinforce concepts like social-emotional learning, literacy, and the engineering design process.

Closing the U.S. Homework Gap Using Unlicensed Spectrum

Closing the U.S. Homework Gap Using Unlicensed Spectrum

Almost 17 million students had no access to the internet in their homes at the start of the pandemic, while many more were impeded by unreliable internet connectivity and slow speeds. This divide wasn’t only restricted to rural locations; it was mirrored in towns and cities too.

A Road Map to Helping Young Students with Dyslexia Succeed

At least 40 states have passed legislation mandating how teachers deal with dyslexia in the classroom, yet misconceptions about dyslexia linger even among educators. NWEA research scientist Tiffany Peltier offers a road map for educators to help students with word-level reading difficulties in the early grades, as well as how to help students identified with dyslexia as they progress through school.

Enterprise-Grade Workplace Productivity Tools Can Be Transformative for Educators

Schools can streamline administrative processes and enhance staff collaboration with workplace productivity solutions that have been made popular by some of the world’s largest and most-respected companies. Enterprise-grade technologies to digitize processes as foundational as human resources paperwork, for example, can provide schools some of the same kind of efficiency and data-access gains that businesses have experienced through digital transformation.

6 Ways to Get Families Engaged in Reading Fluency Growth

Research shows that family engagement is vital to improving student outcomes, so here are six ways educators can strengthen the school-to-family connection by helping caregivers emphasize reading fluency — with actionable ideas for families to help their students develop stronger fluency skills at home.

Five Keys to Ensuring Student Equity in Online Learning

Online learning can be an important tool for advancing student equity by bringing instructional opportunities to students that didn’t exist for them before. However, as we’ve seen during the pandemic, online instruction can sometimes widen equity gaps if the circumstances aren’t favorable. For online learning to support student equity, here are five critical elements that must be in place.

The Re-Emergence of Competency-Based Education: What It Might Look Like and Why It’s Needed in Today’s Classrooms

The opportunities for students to demonstrate their skills and abilities by any means available during the pandemic shattered the one-size-fits-all model of bubble sheets, rote memorization, and timed exams. Already the backlash to No Child Left Behind had softened the terrain, but figuratively tearing down the classroom walls tossed many educators and students into the deep-end of these educational cousins which are soon to be the hallmarks of 21st century learning.

How to Manage Social-Emotional Learning Needs in the Classroom

Educators know that social-emotional learning, also known as SEL, is an important and crucial student need, but managing this in the classroom can be difficult. After all, there’s so much on educators’ plates and SEL is one more thing weighing on educators’ minds.

4 Steps to Improve Outcomes With an Online Literacy Platform for Young ESL Learners

A Bilingual Director of Curriculum in a district with hundreds of young students learning English during the pandemic shares how an online adaptive, blended learning literacy program made a world of difference in outcomes among second-graders transitioning to using English fully in their classes.