NCTL's New Promising Practices Portal
Submitted by Claire Kaplan on Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - 08:53.
Over the last ten years, we've visited hundreds of schools and talked with thousands of educators. Through our observations, conversations, and research, we know that more time, used well, is a strategic lever to help close the country's achievement and opportunity gaps. We want to share that knowledge with you in the hopes that principals and teachers are inspired to adopt proven practices; legislatures enact policies that enable schools to lengthen the school day and/or year; parents advocate for expanding learning time in their schools; and, ultimately, more students and teachers across the country benefit from increased academic and enrichment opportunities.
Today, we are launching a new and improved Promising Practices section of our website that will allow you to more readily access our vast collection of resources from successful expanded-time schools and practitioners. The new section allows you to search our resources, share them with colleagues, and provide us feedback. You can read about the transformation of one of Boston's lowest-performing schools, or see the powerful impacts of teacher collaboration at Jacob Hiatt Magnet School in Worcester, MA. Whether it's a case study, tool, or video, everything you find on the Promising Practices section demonstrates the power of expanding learning time and comes directly from those who work in and attend expanded-time schools.
You can access our resources through NCTL's Resource Search or through NCTL's recently updated Promising Practices section.
We also want to learn from you. In addition to hearing your feedback on our resources and learning what additional information you would find useful, we also want to learn about your success stories. Please send us anecdotes and practices about what is working in your school as you expand learning time to provide students a stronger education. The launch of the Promising Practices section is not just a new part of our website; we hope it will also be the start of a robust online conversation between practitioners and policymakers on how schools are effectively expanding time and better preparing students for success.
We invite you to join us.