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This classic 1989 brief from researchers Kathleen Cotton and Karen Reed Wikelund remains widely cited and circulated more than 20 years after original publication.
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A collection of blog posts, videos, education research, and websites to help teachers strengthen their relationships with all their students.
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Learn about the five key principles that all teachers should know about second-language acquisition and the academic challenges English learners face.
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Ensure smooth transitions for all incoming kindergarten students and their families with recommendations in this white paper and "taking action" worksheet.
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English learners need to develop math and reading skills as well as their knowledge of social studies and science—even while learning English.
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The following resources for planning, designing, and implementing a youth mentoring program were developed by our National Mentoring Center project.
Insights
To address the critical teacher shortage problem in Washington, state policymakers and district administrators are looking at “grow-your-own” teacher strategies, which seek to support current paraeducators interested in pursuing full certification.
Insights
Understanding how to integrate different approaches can go a long way toward helping students of color build a sense of belonging at school.
Insights
Youth program partnerships can help districts and schools accomplish more than what they can do alone. How can you build your capacity to manage them?
Insights
Guest Blogger Jason Younker writes on the challenges colleges face in identifying their American Indian and Alaska Native students and the solution that U of O developed to better serve the community.
Insights
Mandy Smoker Broaddus writes on how Montana is creating language-immersion elementary classrooms as one strategy to restore and revitalize Native languages.
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Mandy Smoker Broaddus writes about Oregon S.B. 13 as a way for tribal peoples to have their presence validated across the state and in classrooms.
Insights
Kindergarten transitions are important for children to succeed in school and later in life. What do principals need to know to help their youngest students thrive?
Insights
Culturally responsive systems are the key to improving outcomes for American Indian and Alaska Native students in school and in life.
Insights
Starting college can be stressful for all students but in particular for those who have experienced trauma. How can educators help?
Resources
The ECMC Foundation launched the Basic Needs Initiative in fall 2019. Through the three-year initiative, a group of seven grantees will receive funding and support to build systemic, sustainable solutions for meeting college students’ basic needs.
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States are developing comprehensive educational data systems that contain a wealth of student data spanning the pre-K, K-12, and postsecondary education systems.
Insights
An expert shares how program-level CTE staff can use data they already collect to make programs more equitable and accessible.
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This article in Principal Leadership examines the research on disparities in exclusionary discipline policies and practices.
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An effective and evidence-based way to improve schools, nonprofits, and government agencies is to make decisions in partnership with those being served. This six-page resource provides an overview and tips for educators and youth workers.
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Our librarians recently compiled this list of the latest studies and resources that states, districts and schools can draw from to create and improve CTE programs.
General
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Case Briefs
At Portland Community College (PCC), first-generation and low-income students can receive support to overcome those barriers through Future Connect, a scholarship and advising program.
Case Briefs
CTE can be a powerful tool for preparing students for college and career success. High-quality programs deliver rigorous academic and technical coursework sequenced across high school and postsecondary education.
Case Briefs
Evergreen Public Schools (EPS) is in the process of a district-wide equity transformation. As part of this effort, EPS partnered with Education Northwest to conduct an equity audit.
Resources
This guide provides basic information for families of English learners and helps you talk with your child’s school, ask the right questions, and support your child on their journey as an English learner.
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A well-designed virtual conference can be just as engaging and useful—or lackluster and uninspiring— as an in-person event. Here are some quick tips that can help you up your game immediately.
Case Briefs
Out-of-school time (OST) programs offer critical opportunities for learning related to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).
Insights
Mandy Smoker Broaddus, Kellie Harry, and Sarah Pierce share reflections from the National Indian Education Association’s annual convention and its theme of Native Control of Native Education.
Insights
Education Northwest announces new Chief Financial Officer, a leader in the education professional services field.
Insights
Kellie Harry is a senior advisor in Native and culturally responsive education and shares her personal story of learning her native Paiute language and advocating for its revitalization.
Insights
In honor of National Mentoring Month, we reflect on the important role mentors play (especially during the COVID-19 pandemic) and provides some mentoring-related resources.
Insights
Jessica Johnson, a highly skilled and experienced leader in the education professional services field, is joining Education Northwest as Chief Program & Development Officer.
Insights
Explore a 2022 report on the lived experiences of superintendents of color in Oregon.
Insights
The Montana State University graduate student centers Native student experiences with financial aid in her work and research. Throughout her life, Twila Miner (Oglala Lakota) has found herself living in two worlds.
Case Briefs
Oregon Senate Bill 13 (Tribal History/Shared History) provided funding to all nine federally recognized Tribes in the state to develop their own Tribally specific curriculum.
Insights
We collaborated with The Ford Family Foundation to study college outcomes for the 42 percent of Oregon’s high school students who attend a rural school.
Insights
Education Northwest’s new Director of School Improvement Systems, Catherine Barbour, helps low-performing schools get better—with equity at the forefront of the effort.
Insights
Black high school students face significant barriers to postsecondary success, including anti-Blackness. Destiny McLennan looks at how they make decisions about their futures despite the obstacles.
Insights
The Arkansas Division of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) invested in intensive supports for schools to build high-functioning professional learning communities using Solution Tree’s Professional PLC at Work® model.
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Education Northwest welcomes our new senior fellow, Stephanie Krauss, who will support our work in youth development, workforce development, and alternative education.
Insights
Idaho’s Rural Endorsement Development Opportunities (REDO) Project gives teachers scholarships to learn how to support and advocate for the state’s English language learner students.
Insights
Accurate identification can help Native migratory students sustain important cultural practices while thriving in school.
Insights
Approaches to career guidance have swung from focused study to broad experience and back again. So what’s the best way for students to find the work they really want to do?
Insights
At the College of Southern Idaho, Assistant Dean of Enrollment Services Monze Stark leads a personalized approach to retention for Latinx and other students.
Insights
When planning for summer programs, considering students’ full humanity, centering equity, and aiming for well-rounded programs will set students up for success.
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Maegan Rides at the Door of the National Native Children’s Trauma Center spoke with Mandy Smoker Broaddus about making trauma-informed work culturally responsive.
Insights
It’s past time that adults take action to promote youth voice. Here are some ways to get started.
Insights
After-school employment has great potential to reinforce and expand on classroom learning—if students, educators, and employers collaborate.
Insights
The Community Conversation Toolkit helps families, educators, and community members discuss how to make schools welcoming and inclusive to all.
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We're are collaborating with the CCRC to adapt a pilot project at three community colleges in Oregon to test the usefulness of the lesson study professional development model in higher education.
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Lesson Study is a structured, collaborative professional development intervention with evidence showing that it improves mathematics instruction among K-12 teachers.
Insights
As an immigrant and first-generation student, Education Northwest researcher Manuel Vazquez draws on lived experience to identify evidence-based programs and policies that are grounded in equity.
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Need a starting point to make your teaching more inclusive of Latinx communities? See our list of resources for lesson plans, activities, documentaries, art, and more.
Insights
Education Northwest celebrates the rich complexity of Latinx identity and the value that diverse cultures, histories, and languages bring to our community.
Insights
As we move from weeks to months of social distancing, school closures, and remote work—and we envision an education system fundamentally changed by the COVID-19 pandemic—Education Northwest is responding to our partners’ changing needs.
Resources
Assessing Mathematical Understanding is a set of mathematics assessments for kindergarten and first-grade students that provides both cumulative data about students’ progress over time and in-depth diagnostic information.
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Education Northwest is governed by a board of directors from the Northwest region comprising Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington.
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The video clips of teacher-student assessment interviews provide an opportunity for users to discuss and clarify different types of student responses.
Insights
With more English learners in American schools, it's important to equip teachers to make learning accessible for all students. A new tool for coaching teachers can help schools meet this challenge.
Case Briefs
Education Northwest supported Align by conducting an independent evaluation of their $2 million Preschool Development Grant Birth Through 5 implementation.
General
Interested in working with us? Have an idea or suggestion? Need help finding a resource? We’d love to hear from you!
Service Lines or Approaches
CTE can prepare students for college and career success—but not all students have the same access to these important learning experiences. With the help of data and evidence, you can improve your CTE programs so every student can participate and succeed.
Service Lines or Approaches
The Institute for Youth Success provides professional development to volunteers and staff of youth programs, relevant, evidence-based information on topics ranging from recruitment to program management.
Case Briefs
We worked to expand the district’s current training efforts by organizing and facilitating a series of in-person meetings for district educators, families and community leaders in order to help educate and guide them.
Insights
Learn strategies for developing an online community with EL students, such as leveraging their digital skills, creating buddy systems, holding breakfast meetings, and checking in with families.
Insights
Using trauma-informed practices helps create a foundation of safety and support. As students work through their own trauma, together we build a community focused on healing, resilience, growth, learning, and success.
Insights
Karen joined Education Northwest as a leader in equity and systems improvement. She brings an asset-based, community-centered approach that helps leaders achieve equity for marginalized groups.
Insights
Education Northwest researcher Diana Serrano experienced the power of education firsthand. Today, she gives back to English learners and educators through research grounded in practical application.
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The sudden pivot to online teaching comes with plenty of challenges, but teachers may be further ahead than they realize because they have already built relationships with their students.
Insights
The killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor have again exposed the systemic nature of racism. As an organization that is committed to rooting out inequities in our education system, we have an obligation to speak out.
Insights
How can we make sure that the stories we teach in our schools not only honor the histories of Indigenous peoples but also respect them as diverse, thriving communities?
Insights
Native communities have been showing up for education during the COVID-19 pandemic—tribal elders, leaders, advocates, and educators have been finding creative ways to engage learners.
Insights
Today, we have an unprecedented opportunity to develop and implement innovative solutions that address long-standing educational challenges. One example is accountability testing.
Insights
As more states extend their school closures and remote learning becomes a new reality, teachers have less time for instruction, as well as less control over when and how students work.
Resources
Math has its own language, and English learners often struggle to understand math concepts in this language. What can math teachers do to help their English learner students succeed?
Insights
As schools, districts, and other educational entities identify their needs during this unprecedented time, Education Northwest is here to provide customized services and resources.
Insights
As a self-identifying “brown-skinned Latina, first-generation immigrant,” Karen Pérez reflects on the meaning of Hispanic Heritage Month and how we can celebrate Latinx heritage.
Insights
The U.S. educational system is now experiencing a test run for the future. COVID-19 has demonstrated that despite the widespread use of online learning in many educational settings, we are still woefully unprepared to meet the needs of all students in such an environment.
Insights
Learn how Montana’s Hays Lodgepole School is weaving students’ Assiniboine and Gros Ventre culture into its curriculum.
Insights
Dr. Ivory Toldson of Howard University shares how to filter out “bad stats” about Black students, find good data, and center student voice in our schools.
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Education Northwest researchers recently completed a REL Northwest study that provides a landscape scan of secondary CTE programming in Oregon.
Insights
ECMC Foundation’s Basic Needs Initiative is helping colleges and nonprofit partners connect students to food, housing, and more.
Insights
The Nelson Scholarship Program strives to increase Native representation in education by supporting Native students in the Northwest who are pursuing a master’s degree in a related field.
Insights
K-5 office discipline referrals in Oregon were less likely to result in suspensions or expulsions for most student racial/ethnic groups—except Black students—after 2015 state policy reform.
Insights
REL Northwest has designed a toolkit to help educators identify and use research-based policies and procedures for supporting newcomer immigrant students who are attending secondary schools in the United States.
Insights
We partnered with the CCRC and three community colleges to adapt lesson study, a professional development strategy proven to be effective in K–12 classrooms, to the postsecondary context.
Case Briefs
When the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the K–12 education system, new complications in teaching and learning piled onto existing challenges caused by systemic racism.
Insights
Centering cultural responsiveness on youth, families and elders and making cultural connections across the curriculum are two of the family engagement strategies shared in this blog post.
Insights
Our researchers write about how they used a methodology developed by medical researchers to create a useful tool for determining how long it will take students to pass a language proficiency test and exit English learner services.
Insights
Going to college makes a significant difference in students' future earnings. Read about how CTE could help energize more Oregon students to pursue a postsecondary path.
Insights
Jacob Williams looks at the role educators can play in supporting youth to help keep them out of trouble and discusses several risk domains associated with young people based on a new, comprehensive literature review.
Insights
Math success for students with learning disabilities and struggling learners starts with solid teaching practices combined with necessary, specially designed teaching adjustments.
Insights
For many Americans, high tuition costs are a primary barrier to attending college and earning a postsecondary credential.
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Reauthorization of federal CTE legislation offers states an opportunity to rethink their CTE performance indicators. Steve Klein provides a set of principles to help guide states' work.
Insights
Financial aid helps expand college access but not all eligible students apply. This post explores the barriers students face in applying for aid and provides FAFSA-completion strategies for educators.
Insights
Researcher Vicki Nishioka frames alarming statistics for out-of-school suspensions and discipline disparities in preschool programs with a set of practices that can help schools end the problem.
Insights
English learners entering high school have to learn both English and grade-level content to begin accumulating credits to graduate.
Insights
Mandy Smoker Broaddus shares a set of steps that can make an immediate impact in helping American Indian students and community members feel welcome at school.
Insights
What skills can teachers learn to relate better to their students across cultures? Researcher Vicki Nishioka offers strategies to build teacher-student relationships and close the racial discipline gap.
Insights
How can teachers reach all their students—including students from cultural backgrounds different from their own?
Resources
Want to learn the basics of social and emotional learning? Download this primer to learn concepts you can use to help students develop “nonacademic skills” and reach their full potential.
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This report explores the implementation and signs of progress of Oregon Promise in its first year.
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Find out about the progress community colleges in Oregon are making to support students who are traditionally required to take developmental education courses and face a high risk for not graduating from college.
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The presence of traumatized children in our schools is nothing new, but research now shows us how we, as educators, can moderate the effects of trauma on students' ability to learn.
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Roughly one-third of students who did not file a FAFSA, would have been eligible for a Federal Pell Grant, which provides aid for low-income undergraduate students and lowers the costs of college.
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Intermediary organizations that serve as the backbone of an education network can be integral to a network’s success. Use this checklist to assess whether a potential intermediary partner can fulfill the core capacities to your emerging network.
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This brief provides educators with the background, rationale and evidence for implementing an uninterrupted, 90-minute literacy block as part of a comprehensive approach to teaching reading in elementary schools.
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Think through important decisions on why to measure SEL, how to use SEL data and which skills, mindsets and capacities are appropriate to measure with this informative two-page guide.
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When forming a professional learning network, how do you ensure your efforts are meaningful and sustainable? This resource will help you start your network with a clear purpose and solid direction.
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What does a high-performing education network look like, and what steps can emerging networks take to get there?
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Cyberbullying, or electronic aggression, is unwanted behavior by a student or group of students that occurs through email, chat rooms, instant message, websites or social media.
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Summer melt is even more prevalent for low-income students, students in large urban districts, and community-college bound students—with attrition rates as high as 40 percent.
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Designed to help districts assess and optimize their EL services, this tool contains 71 items organized into eight sections that address key components of a district’s program for English learners.
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How Future Connect is Improving College Success Through Comprehensive Advising and Financial Support
This report is the first external evaluation of Future Connect. It examines the program’s impact on college performance, progression, persistence, transfer, and completion.
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This brief serves as a resource for K–12 districts, state education agencies, higher education institutions and district Title VI Indian education offices.
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This booklet presents some research-based ideas as a starting place for those who want to develop better policies and practices to support student attendance.
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Program evaluation is an increasingly important area of operations for all youth mentoring programs. These resources can help youth mentoring programs evaluate the quality of the mentoring relationships they are building
Resources
This classic brief reviews research on the relationship between teachers' classroom questioning behaviors and a variety of student outcomes, including achievement, retention and participation.
Insights
Accountability indicators contained within the federal Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act have a profound effect on career and technical education (CTE).
Insights
Our new study highlights creative solutions to encourage educators to earn dual credit teaching credentials.
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Poor writing skills are a barrier to hiring and promotion for many individuals, and remediation of problems with writing imposes significant operational and training costs on public and private organizations.
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The Oregon Leadership Network promotes the engagement of school and district staff to continually examine and discuss potential inequities.
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This classic research synthesis by Researcher Kathleen Cotton cites classroom, school, and district practices that research has shown to foster positive student achievement, attitudes and social behavior.
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This list of available recent studies and articles on time to reclassification for English learners can help inform processes such as program planning and resource allocation.
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The School Improvement Research Series was produced by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory under a contract with the Office of Educational Research and Improvement U.S. Department of Education.
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We compiled this list of resources containing information on what changes schools can make to create a more welcoming school climate and increase the engagement of American Indian and Alaska Native families in schools.
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This classic brief looks at the research on activities pursued by teachers to keep track of student learning for purposes of making instructional decisions and providing student feedback.
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Placing students into small groups can be a powerful approach to stimulate learning. This resource serves educators looking to improve classroom instruction through small-group student learning.
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Research shows that programs that support students’ development in communicating effectively, negotiating conflict, managing their emotions and behavior and other social and emotional skills can lead to better academic and life outcomes.
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A publications that provides training for use of the Indigenous Culture-Based Education Rubrics, which were originally developed to measure culture-based education (CBE) program levels in partner schools.
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Our mission is to use evidence to help partners solve educational challenges and improve learning.
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Partners from CCSSO, AIR and Education Northwest adapted two widely used teacher evaluation and support systems into new resources for teachers with English learners in their classrooms.
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The density and complexity of social science textbooks and other texts can be particularly challenging for English learners. What principles and strategies can social studies teachers employ?
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Based on research, we identified key principles that teachers with English learner students in their classrooms should know. These principles are “big ideas” or concepts about second language acquisition and the academic challenges English learners face.