Through discussions with teachers who were finishing their first “virtual school” experience last spring, we found that regular attendance was an issue. For Ed Directions coaches, student attendance is a critical variable that schools must control in order to reach the goal of “success for all.” Research indicates that if

Assessing the Impact – Who Needs Rituals and Routines All students benefit from rituals and routines. They support optimum cultures and climates in classrooms, build comfort zones for students to support optimum behaviors, and they provide proactive interventions that do not have to involve punishments or recriminations. Students who are

Assessing the Impact – Who Needs Rituals and Routines All students benefit from rituals and routines. They support optimum cultures and climates in classrooms, build comfort zones for students to support optimum behaviors, and they provide proactive interventions that do not have to involve punishments or recriminations. Students who are

A group of Ed Directions coaches were speculating as to the strategies schools were going to use to start school in August 2020. They were concerned that plans were going to be focused on running a virtual, hybrid, or a physical school.  We quickly realized that the conversation needed to

The coronavirus put schools and teachers into an untenable position because they were forced to shut down classrooms and offer nearly a full semester of virtual school experience without adequate preparation, training, or resources. Now that we’ve had our first experience with an extended virtual school program, let’s take a

When the Ed Directions coaches started discussing the impact of the coronavirus on schools, one of our first concerns was how moving to virtual learning would exacerbate gaps between and among groups of students. Since most of our work is with schools that need to improve test scores or reduce

The NASSP report on principal retention addressed one of the major barriers to ongoing school improvement – the problem of retaining effective principals in place. As a company that works with schools or districts that have been identified as “needing assistance,” Ed Directions has experienced almost all of the data

For the past 20 years, the coaches and leaders at Ed Directions have had the opportunity to review school testing plans and have found that most schools follow a predictable pattern. Schools plan to meet all state and district guidelines and requirements; develop a schedule for receiving, storing, and distributing the tests;

In a recent community forum the focus of the discussion was school violence. The audience was enthusiastic and involved, but the discussion varied from speaker to speaker and from focus area to focus area. As the last speaker on the panel I tried to focus on a practitioner’s view of

Frank DeSensi | Founder/CIOEducational Directions I will admit that as an assistant principal, I did not consider the academic potential for learners when I planned for the weeks remaining after the end-of-year test. As result, while we were able to end the year without serious casualties, clear the classrooms and

When we started working with schools as an external change agent, we immediately noticed a problem with school calendars. In a nutshell, most of the school calendars are scheduled around adults.  This adult-centric schedule mandates when the district checks for student progress, how districts develop student curriculum, and what pace

A revelation came at a school where it appeared that very few students understood science. In the process of probing beyond raw scores, we again found something that forced us to drastically change our approach to analyzing test scores. In this school, we helped the school leadership team probe into

During the early years of our company, we worked with several middle schools. Their data indicated social studies students were consistently scoring low in the US Constitution portion of the test. All of these schools had labeled this as an area of priority need, and they had included in their

The answer – no. Not in all cases. The first issue that caused us to rethink our approach to using test scores to drive change occurred in a school where we were asked to provide assistance after the start of the school year. Our first task, we thought, was to

Our book Turning Around Turnaround Schools is intended for those who work in or with turnaround schools, though the approach to education presented works with any type of school (public, private, charter, and so on) at any level (struggling, passing, blue ribbon, and so on). We hope to share the