Suggested Reading

How Data and Inclusive Leadership Improve School Outcomes: School leaders today face challenges and opportunities that require an emphasis on data and collaboration for decision-making. When combined, student learning grows. Research shows that involving teachers in decision-making positively impacts student learning and job satisfaction. To achieve this, schools must embrace educators’ feedback to create teacher agency and collective, data-driven decision-making. Cognia members share their experiences—from a large district in Alabama that used diagnostic review data to inform professional learning aligned with their overall strategic plan to a small, specialized school in Montana that appreciated the “team approach” used by Cognia in professional development and strategic planning.

Research Brief – Cognia’s Continuous Improvement Framework: All schools can improve, just as all learners strive to reach their full potential. Cognia supports and facilitates school improvement through its research-based continuous improvement framework. Cognia is dedicated to inspiring providers and enabling them to advance pathways of opportunities for all learners. A key component in the advancement of learning is ongoing school improvement. Cognia supports and facilitates school improvement through a continuous improvement framework. As described in this brief, this approach enables educators and leaders to engage in a clear and research-based process while attending to their unique context and needs.

Growing Prosocial Brains: We all want to inhabit a world of kindness, integrity, and empathy—to be treated fairly and respectfully by our fellow humans. Teachers especially want to engender this in their classrooms. But sometimes the cooperative and peaceful classroom culture we envision feels just beyond our reach. Yes, clear boundaries can help many children to understand and respect the behavioral expectations of the classroom, but when a child’s behavior is inappropriate, challenging, and upsetting, tightening those boundaries is almost always ineffective. What we need to do instead—both in the moment of a challenging behavior and in the longer term—is to help children learn to take responsibility for their actions and the actions of others in their community. We need to teach them prosocial behaviors.

Why principals love these 5 ways their roles are being redefined: The role of principals in student success is immense but some educators may not quite comprehend the full breadth of a building leader’s influence on achievement. For one, the principal’s impact on learning growth is “significantly larger in scope” than that of teachers, say the authors of “Redefining the Role of the Principal: Innovative Approaches to Empower School Leaders,” a new report from the Aspen Institute that looks at the new ways principals are being empowered by their districts. That impact is magnified when principals create strong learning climates that promote high expectations for students and teachers, continuous analysis of student data, and a culture of accountability, the researchers assert. Moreover, a staggering 85% of principals reported high levels of stress compared to just a little more than a third of the general workforce that said the same. Finally, principal turnover leads to teacher turnover, which can also depress student achievement. Against this backdrop, states and districts are taking steps to redefine and empower principals.