September 2005
The Whole Child
What does it mean to be educated? Certainly more than passing a high-stakes test or even mastering a specific academic curriculum. Students' overall well-being must be nurtured, too. How can schools address students' physical, emotional, social, moral, and intellectual development? How can the arts help students flourish? How is your school building a comprehensive approach to learning? What school practices create lifelong learners? Foster students' resilience and social competence? From educating about nutrition to upholding students' rights—tell us how your school is preparing students to be healthy, productive, moral citizens.
Deadline: April 1, 2005
October 2005
Reading Comprehension
Adolescents' lack of skill in “reading to learn” is an urgent matter. This issue will explore strategies for taking students beyond decoding to meaningful comprehension. What strategies help students connect and apply what they read as they encounter complex texts in content areas? What does brain research say about the cognitive processes that enable students to comprehend text? How can teachers motivate older students to spend time reading? How do educators use nontraditional texts, collaborative learning, and technology to engage more students? How can we connect reading and writing?
Deadline: May 2, 2005
November 2005
Assessment That Promotes Learning
This issue will examine the role of all kinds of assessment—standardized tests, classroom diagnostic assessments, readiness tests, performance-based assessment, and collaborative assessment of student work—in promoting student learning. What skills and knowledge should schools assess? How can teachers use assessment data to monitor student progress and inform instruction? How can educators align curriculum standards, instruction, and assessment? Describe the alternative assessments that you are using that are particularly suited to measuring complex or holistic learning goals. Where do such traditional methods of assessment as homework and report cards fit in? How can we ensure that assessments are valid, fair, equitable, and developmentally appropriate? How do assessments vary across the content areas?
Deadline: June 1, 2005
December 2005/January 2006
Learning in the Digital Age
We cannot provide an effective education for the digital generation without taking into account technology's effects on students' lives and learning. How are digital technologies changing students' background knowledge, attitudes about learning, and social interactions? What new information literacy skills are essential (for example, online research skills and the ability to critically evaluate information), and how are schools teaching these skills? How can we reduce the digital divides? What technology practices transform instruction in various subject areas and for various groups of student? How are you dealing with such problems as plagiarism and cyberbullying? What is your school doing to improve the technology skills of teachers?
Deadline: July 1, 2005
February 2006
Helping Struggling Students
As policymakers pressure schools to increase academic rigor, educators work every day with students who have not yet mastered the skills and knowledge they need to succeed. Articles in this issue will explore how educators can creatively help struggling students. How are educators changing school cultures, instructional methods, or content to better accommodate strugglers? What role does lack of motivation play, and how are schools engaging low-achieving students? What is the effect of offering—or pushing down—a demanding curriculum? Can such strategies as differentiated instruction, direct instruction, teaching to multiple learning styles, early intervention, or tutoring prevent failure? Should schools define achievement more broadly?
Deadline: September 1, 2005
March 2006
Improving Professional Practice
Having a high-quality teacher in the classroom is the key to providing a high-quality education for every student. Articles in this issue will examine what schools are doing to improve professional practice. What teacher skills, knowledge, and personal characteristics promote higher student achievement? Do we need different teacher qualities for different schools? What kinds of teacher education—preservice and inservice—best prepares teachers for classroom realities: diverse students, challenging education mandates, and high expectations?
A Special Section will look at The Role of Research in Schools. How can educators make sense of contradictory or ideologically-based research findings? How are educators using research to enlighten their practice?
Deadline: October 1, 2005
April 2006
Teaching the Tweens
Today's “tweens”—young people ages 9 through 13—face new challenges: increasing academic pressures; less-stable societal structures; and a pop culture pushing sex, violence, and materialism. This issue will examine how schools are supporting students in this age group. What curriculum content and instructional strategies engage these students, capitalizing on their growing idealism and interest in the world around them? What behaviors are developmentally appropriate for tweens? How can schools help them deal with the myriad of emotional, social, and physical changes they are experiencing? How are schools providing the supports tweens need by manipulating grade configurations, creating positive school climates, and building solid relationships? What kinds of parent involvement work best with students at this age of growing independence?
Deadline: November 1, 2005
May 2006
Challenging the Status Quo
What sacrosanct school traditions have innovative schools learned to survive—and thrive—without? This issue takes a look at schools and school districts that break the mold—and, in so doing, have broken down walls of bureaucracy and broken through barriers to student achievement. These educators challenge conventional thinking about student grades, standards and testing, the curriculum development process, leadership, school climate, promotion and retention, classroom management, and/or parent involvement. We are looking for case studies, program descriptions, and classroom examples as well as results and research that show a particular innovation works. From integrating the curriculum to creating new rules for student behavior, readers will want lessons on how to face the challenges of implementation, not simply rosy pictures. How can other educators replicate mold-breaking experiments? And should they try?
Deadline: December 1, 2005
