A new guide from the National Dropout Prevention Center recommends best practices for making alternative schools and programs effective for students. The guide urges district officials to ensure that such programs provide career education, mentoring and extracurricular activities, and places particular emphasis on students' relationships with adults.

The key to closing the student achievement gap is focusing on alignment, asserts Kari Wehrly, chief of schools in a California community. In this commentary, Wehrly shares how coordinating curriculum, expectations for teachers and students, and prioritizing whole-child support improves outcomes for students.

Abril Delamora Gonzalez transferred from her traditional high school to an alternative school on the same campus in her junior year and credits the change with helping her connect with teachers and find her purpose. Her attendance and grades improved thanks to more one-on-one time with teachers, which helped ease her anxiety by ensuring that she understood what was expected of her, she says.

Teacher and researcher Josemaría Carazo Abolafia utilizes in his classroom the "multimedia learning hypothesis," which posits that words and pictures together can be more effective teaching tools than only words. He primarily uses videos, which he says can help personalize the learning experience, and offers tips for overcoming problems like passivity or "reception overload" in students.

Teachers' professional development is in need of reform, including transitioning from "PD activities to creating PD experiences," according to a presentation at the TCEA Convention & Exposition in Austin, Texas. In this blog post, Kanoe Namahoe, director of content for SmartBrief Education and Leadership, shares several other highlights from the conference, including insights on alternative education from Jean Sharp, chief academic officer at Apex Learning.

About nine in 10 teachers say they favor coaching for professional development, according to a survey of teachers by Digital Promise and Learning Forward. Data show that teachers were more likely to find coaching useful if they met biweekly with their coaches.

A pilot program funded by The Wallace Foundation that directed millions of dollars to a "principal pipeline" to strengthen school leaders has led to gains in math and reading scores in six large, urban school districts. Plans now are underway to expand the program to 90 school systems in 31 states.

Students learning to read music need to work on a skill called audiation, which is akin to subvocalization in literacy, writes Brian Campbell, a middle-school band director. Campbell notes in this blog post that teachers can help struggling readers strengthen their "inner voice" by having them reread passages to focus on inflection and rhythm, start at different points in the text so they can't rely on memorization, and discuss mistakes after the exercise is over.

Alignment to standards	75.00%
Support for students who need extra help	25.00%

Last year, states increased focus on career and technical education, with 41 states voting on funding-related actions and policies supporting CTE approved in almost every state, according to a report from Advance CTE, the Education Commission of the States and the Association for Career and Technical Education. Policies in some states included measures to create authorities to oversee CTE efforts, increase access to programs and boost pay for CTE teachers.

More than four years since it passed, the Every Student Succeeds Act may not have led to gains for English-language learners, according to a report from the Migration Policy Institute. The report states that "more often than not, long-term goals were purely symbolic because they rarely played a meaningful role in accountability systems."

In this podcast episode, we discuss the challenges of engaging more females in computer science and some of the strategies to inspire these young learners to explore computer science and technology courses and pursue careers in these fields. Our guests on the show are Sabine Thomas, the northwest manager for Code.org, and Misty Christensen, a computer science teacher at Dunwoody High School in Georgia. Listen to the podcast.

February is CTE Month! CTE courses are an important curriculum offering designed to better prepare students for the workforce and careers immediately following graduation. Juniors and seniors in high school who complete CTE courses are more likely to graduate on time and less likely to drop out of school, compared to those who don't participate in CTE programs. Read the blog.

Join us for a webinar on March 11th to learn about strategies and best practices you can utilize in your district to help students increase grade-level proficiency and be ready to do well on state tests. The featured presenter is April Simmons-Brown, English Curriculum Specialist, Dorchester School District Two in South Carolina. Register for the webinar.

We want to make sure you are aware of changes to the SmartBrief Privacy Policy, effective Jan. 1, 2020. You can find our updated Privacy Policy here. Some key updates include:

• New privacy features for Californians' consumer privacy rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018.
• Additional information regarding our use of advertising networks and advertising tags.

Thank you for being a valued SmartBrief subscriber.