Teachers Know Best: Making Data Work for Teachers and Students — Report

District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) has been widely heralded in recent years as one of the nation’s fastest-improving urban public school districts. Most coverage has focused on the district’s strong and stable leadership and its sustained focus on educator effectiveness.

What happens when teachers trade isolation for collaboration? Teachers in Colorado and Kentucky wanted to find out so they created the Common Assignment Study (CAS) to show the positive impact of teachers working across district and state lines to better serve students.

As a high social studies teacher, I have the weighty responsibility of introducing the students in my rural school in Kentucky to historical, civic, geographical, and economic issues that are quite often beyond the scope of their day-to-day lives.