Ed Source – John Fensterwald
“A Harvard University professor who evaluated the CORE districts’ research on the relationship between students’ social and emotional skills and academic achievement reports encouraging initial results. And he says the work should continue, even if the districts’ controversial next step – incorporating the findings from student surveys into an index that ranks schools’ performance – has pitfalls. The California CORE districts are doing groundbreaking work and serving as a lab for the nation, Martin West, an associate professor in Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, wrote in an article published Thursday by the Brookings Institution, where he is a senior fellow. “What is important is that we learn from what happens next. We need to let evidence speak.” The California Office to Reform Education, or CORE, is a collaborative of nine districts, six of which received a federal waiver from the No Child Left Behind Act three years ago to design a new school accountability system. They include some of the state’s largest districts – Los Angeles, Long Beach, Fresno, Santa Ana, San Francisco and Oakland – with nearly a million students.”(more)