What behaviors and interactions do you see in your young students that are particularly concerning? What does that behavior look like? Is it disruptive or explosive?

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is the primary statistical agency of the U.S. Department of Education. It is one of 13 governmental agencies whose activities are predominantly focused on collecting and analyzing information for statistical purposes.

For decades, we’ve been trying to improve students’ reading comprehension and writing ability. But we haven’t seen much in terms of results.

Thanks to decades of research, we now have a solid understanding of what happens in the brain when learning to read. Although it may happen at different speeds for different students, this pathway to reading is the same for everyone. This knowledge is powerful because it helps identify places where literacy development is breaking down for students.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” Charles Dickens. (A Tale of Two Cities, 1859) These century-and-half-old words describe what it is like being an educator today.

I once invited a refugee from Rwanda to be a guest speaker for my ELA/social studies class. She shared how she lost her entire family during the Rwandan genocide and was forced to live in a refugee camp for 17 years with no running water or electricity.