Interactive Agenda

Table of Contents

Mind the Gap: New Views on Ensuring All Students Reach Their Full Potential

Please cite as:
Proceedings of ACR National Policy Forum, September 8 2005, Academy for Educational Development, Washington DC. Online at http://www.acr.uc.edu/journal.html

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Vice President for Professional Issues, American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education and ACR Steering Committee

Given the different stances and perspectives of panelists and participants, some unique agreements were identified as areas to prompt further round-table work:

1) “Redefining Learning & Teaching” – Ways to most effectively address knowledge, skills, and content learning (see ACR’s Schoolwide Goals for Student Learning as well).
2) Systemic collaborations and work across stakeholder groups.
3) Aligning what we know we should do, with what we actually do, with what we need to know more about doing.

TOPICS IDENTIFIED FROM TABLE DISCUSSIONS:

1. Centrality of professional development
2. Link of research to practice
3. Role of building principals – must be educational leaders
4. Student self-assessment becomes a major focus.
5. Generation of knowledge by students and creativity – using the skills & knowledge they learn.
6. Changing how higher education thinks about testing and learning
7. Recruitment of the best and brightest to education – and their retention (including financial considerations)
8. Other countries as sources of role modeling in education.
9. More integration of formal and informal learning.
10. Restructuring of school year is needed.
11. School wide goals for learning and student achievement outcomes as focus for educational design – and not necessarily content-discipline “silos.”
12. Time to teach – too many other things take teachers and students from teaching and learning, including assessments (agreement that they’re needed, but in a “smarter” approach).
13. Learning to learn skills
14. Interdisciplinary effort that supports subject areas
15. Balance external accountability with internal assessment leading to learning
16. Study of collaborations – examples and maps to successfully building and maintaining.
17. Questions of the “willingness” to eliminate the performance / achievement gap.
18. Attending to the students we have – and that some students may need different supports, including even new structures for schools.
19. Advocacy structures needed for students who don’t have it at home.
20. Need to collaborate across stakeholder groups – to “drill down” the message to local communities, parents, community organizations, in order to get the grass roots will to address these issues.