Education Week and the New America Foundation On the Primary Years Agenda

For external perspectives on “The Primary Years Agenda: Strategies to Guide District Action,” see: Districts Play a Key Role in Building Quality Early Childhood Programs (Education Week) Who Knows What’s Happening? Creating Pre-K through 3rd Alignment (New America Foundation) Happy Holidays!

New Article Collections Page

I’ve gathered together a number of articles and case studies on a new Feature Articles page. And see this week’s Marshall Memo, a weekly digest of education news for principals and other education leaders, for a summary of the Primary Years Agenda article. Happy Thanksgiving!

Does Your Design Process Look Like This?

Does your partnership sometimes “go wide” before focusing in on concrete strategies? For a helpful toolkit on designing new strategies, initiatives, and/or programs, see Design Thinking for Educators by the renowned design firm IDEO. Thanks for Bob Ettinger of Cambridge for sharing this resource. To see a creative application of this process to early education, check out the…

What We’re Learning  

In last week’s post I showed how the work of Massachusetts’ Birth—3rd partnerships is “spilling over” in unexpected and promising ways due to the creation of new social and institutional relationships. These spillovers illustrate how the new relationships that partnerships create can lead to new strategies and build capacity for ongoing improvement.  These developments are…

New Article in Kappan Magazine

Kappan Magazine has just published an article I wrote , The Primary Years Agenda: Strategies to Guide District Action. I draw on examples from Massachusetts and other states to make the case for three Birth-3rd strategies. These strategies are as relevant to communities as they are to districts. They are intended to help set priorities…

New Brief on Reading Proficiency Learning Network and Other Resources

Strategies for Children (SFC) has released a new brief describing the work of the Massachusetts Third Grade Reading Proficiency Learning Network: Changing the Trajectory: Communities Take Action to Increase Reading Proficiency. SFC convened a group of Massachusetts communities to engage in a strategic planning process in collaboration with Harvard literacy expert, Nonie Lesaux. This process…