Yesterday, a letter was delivered to Capitol Hill to urge Congress to support the 21st Century Community Learning Center (21st CCLC) program. Among other important initiatives, CCLC supports expanded learning time (ELT). Our organization is proud to be a signatory.

I must begin this post with a confession: I love the summer and everything about it. I love simmering days lolling on the beach, long evenings on the porch sipping tangy lemonade, early mornings playing tennis as the heat of the day starts to build and cooling off later at an outdoor pool. Most of all, I relish that invigorating feeling of relaxation and rejuvenation that floats effortlessly through the tepid air.

Every so often in the field of education research a study comes along that challenges some basic assumptions about the way that schools and school systems operate. Such is the case of a new report released by TNTP entitled The Mirage: Confronting the Hard Truth About Our Quest for Teacher Development. In setting out to answer a core question in education—do we know how to help teachers improve?—this new piece of research ends up raising serious doubts about how we typically endeavor to improve instruction and raise achievement.

As the foremost organization committed to ensuring that all students have sufficient learning time to achieve at high levels, NCTL takes seriously our responsibility to track the current national conditions of school time. This tracking takes place on a number of fronts. Periodically, we publish a report on both policy and practice trends around expanding school time, known as Learning Time in America. 

Following the term of interim superintendent John McDonough, Tommy Chang has now taken the reins of the Massachusetts’ largest—and the nation’s oldest—school system.

This week, the Senate passed a bipartisan bill to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the federal government’s most comprehensive education law.  The new bill, called the Every Child Achieves Act, would replace the law currently known as No Child Left Behind or NCLB. 

We are excited to share that the Telly Awards has awarded Knowledge Delivery Systems (KDS) a Telly for our UP Education Video! Collaborative Lesson Planning was awarded the Silver Telly in the Non-Broadcast Productions - Education (for academic use) category as well as the Bronze Telly for the Online Video - Education category.

Last week, I attended The Boston Foundation’s first in a series of forums focused on examining Boston's growing inequality gap and charting Boston’s course to greater income equity and opportunity. Robert D. Putnam discussed his new book Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis, an examination of the impact of the opportunity gap for the nation's children.