Publications

This general Web resource for teachers provides example schedules demonstrating various block scheduling options, including using paraprofessionals for lunch supervision. 

This National Center on Time and Learning report describes how 17 highly effective schools have expanded their learning time in ways that allow for more professional learning opportunities. It includes assessment charts schools can use to judge how they can improve.

This research review from the National Center on Time and Learning describes how adding time to the school day and/or year can have a positive impact on student proficiency. The report outlines the potential benefits of expanded time for students and teachers, including more dedicated time for teacher collaboration and embedded professional development. 

Research conducted by American Institutes of Research (funded by The Boston Foundation) on extended school days in Boston found that the best-performing schools allow time for teachers to plan cooperatively, focus on professional development, and assess and work with individual students. High-performing schools were purposeful about their teachers’ time (for example, no teachers monitor lunch), and professional learning was built into the school schedule.

Learning Forward gives step-by-step guidance in this workbook on developing professional learning plans, which include analyzing student learning needs, selecting content, providing implementation support, and evaluation. The workbook includes a section on finding time for professional learning.

Learning Forward’s step-by-step guide shows how schools and districts can increase collaborative learning time for teachers. It goes through the process of analyzing current uses of time, identifying opportunities for collaborative learning, revising school schedules, and evaluating the results of increased professional learning time.  

The U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board wrote this report to the president and Congress to help federal agencies improve how they assess job candidates. In addition to summarizing existing research on the effectiveness of various assessment methods, the report provides specific strategies for verifying an applicant’s assertions about his/her training and experience.

This research attempted to determine the relationship between personality dimensions and job performance using the NEO-Personality Inventory. It found that three personality dimensions—emotional stability, openness to experience, and agreeableness—explained 28 percent of the variance in participants’ management performance.

In an article for School Administrator magazine, Lucy Steiner and Sharon Kebschull Barrett examine how understanding competencies—habits of behavior and underlying motivations, which can help predict how newly hired employees will do their jobs—can help administrators, such as those in Minneapolis, hire the leaders they need to turn around even the most troubled schools.

This toolkit from Public Impact is designed to help district officials identify and hire teachers who have the capacity and will to implement school turnarounds. This resource clarifies the critical competencies—habits of behavior and underlying motivations—that enable people to be successful in attempts to transform schools from failure to excellence quickly.