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Rick Alleva is a field specialist at the University of New Hampshire and co-author of a curriculum called “ Courage to Care ,” which promotes empathy for middle schoolers. He has been researching and promoting positive youth development and the use of mindful learning as well as social and emotional learning (SEML) for many years. After graduating from Tufts University with a degree in psychology, he traveled cross-country, coming across many teenage runaways. That later heightened his...

On Dec. 7, 2017 , the California Department of Education published the California School Dashboard for schools and districts. The dashboard shows progress, or lack of it, on multiple measures. This database shows indicators of progress on five measures, in color codes selected by the state. (See below for details.) Other indicators will be will be added later as the state develops them, or collects the data needed to populate this database. To find indicators from a school or district, enter...

Earlier this year, a representative of a California advocacy and civil-rights organization asked me if the California Collaborative for Educational Excellence , the new state agency that I head, has a “genuine sense of urgency” about its work in getting the right kind of help and assistance to districts, charters and county offices of education. I told him that the very first meeting that we had in the very first district that we agreed to take on was at Ironwood State Prison, which is...

School districts had a year to implement a state law that banned zero-tolerance policies and emphasized restorative justice practices. We check back in with five districts we visited in the summer of 2016 to see how school discipline has changed. On the second day of the school year, Amber Owens got the kind of jolt every parent dreads. She was called to the nurse’s office at Champaign’s Bottenfield Elementary, where she found her 7-year-old son, Simon, sobbing uncontrollably and bleeding...

Nearly 1.5 million high-school students in the U.S. are physically abused by dating partners every year. More than one-third of 10th-graders (35 percent) have been physically or verbally abused by dating partners, while a similar percentage are perpetrators of such abuse. Youth from low-income backgrounds, those from marginalized racial and ethnic groups, and LGBTQ students are at the greatest risk of experiencing such harm. The consequences are devastating. Data from the Centers for Disease...

The Attachment & Trauma Network announces the full agenda of the first National Creating Trauma-Sensitive Schools Conference, February 18-20, 2018 at the Washington Hilton in Washington DC. The conference will feature keynotes by Dr. Susan Craig & Melissa Sadin, Robert Hull, and Dr. Mona Johnson. A Building Trauma-Informed Community luncheon will be held on Tuesday. And Jim Sporleder will be our special guest at a screening of Paper Tigers on Sunday night. "We had an overwhelming...

“There are students that are being bullied because of the clothing that they're wearing,” says Emily Edwards, a social worker at an elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee. “The Care Counts™ program installs washers and dryers in schools to improve attendance by giving kids access to clean clothes,” says Edwards. The school now has a washer and dryer on school property, and parents can come use them free of charge. “In our classroom, we've talked about how 7 out of 10 of us are at or below...

Four students from Buckingham Charter Magnet School will be honored by the Solano County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday as winners of the 2017 Power of Kindness Campaign. The Power of Kindness Campaign was sponsored by District Attorney Krishna Abrams and Supervisor John Vasquez “to bring students together and increase overall happiness on our school campuses,” a county document states. The Buckingham Charter students won the competition with their video, “The Power of One,” the message of...

Editor’s note: This story was produced in conjunction with On Campus , a Civil Beat podcast series that tracks the first year of a new school in Hawaii and examines big education issues in America. Thanks to ACEs Connection member, Godwin Higa, who retired this year as principal of Cherokee Point Elementary School in San Diego, CA, for being a champion in this article. Nothing about the classroom looked abnormal. Seventh-grade teacher Allison Harkey stood at the front of her Wheeler Middle...

NPR's Scott Simon talks to Washington, D.C., city council member David Grosso about his proposal to ban out-of-school suspensions in the District's public and charter schools. GROSSO: Well, studies have shown us that over the past number of years, as people have looked at suspensions - that once you've been suspended once, you're more likely to be suspended again and again and again and again. There have been schools now in D.C. that have chosen to not do suspensions at all already, and...

Despite making up the majority of California’s public school students, Latinos are still facing major challenges to achieving in school and graduating from college, a new report finds. But the report also highlights five bright spots in the LA County area — schools, districts, and programs that are helping Latinos succeed. In Los Angeles County, two school districts, a high school, and an early education center are modeling what needs to be done to close the achievement gap for Latino...

When my daughter was a toddler, I regularly spilled milk in front of her during meal time. “Oops, oh well, no big deal, let’s clean it up!!” I would say in my high-pitched, goofy mom voice. Before she could speak, I sensed that she was wired for perfectionism (something very familiar to me), so I attempted to normalize day-to-day mistakes and to show her how easy it was to bounce back from them. We’re in the thick of the spilled-milk journey right now—learning to accept and embrace mistakes...