Welcome to the first blog post in our Strategic Budgeting series.  We plan to update this series weekly, with different information about how local education agencies (LEAs – often just referred to as school districts) can more strategically think about budgeting and finance issues.  We are from the Region 5 Comprehensive Center, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Education to provide technical assistance and capacity building support to…

The Region 5 Comprehensive Center offers the first blog in a three-part series on the development of a process for vetting high-quality instructional materials in Virginia. Successful implementation of high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) begins with textbook adoption for many states and school districts. But it doesn't end there. Some states have been vetting all instructional materials to accelerate learning inside and outside the…

The following blog is the third in a series of blog posts on the Region 5 Networked Improvement Community to collectively scale effective solutions to persistent education challenges. The Region 5 Comprehensive Center is co-developing ready-made resources with state educational leaders in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia for those interested in establishing Networked Improvement Communities to drive local improvement…

The following Region 5 Comprehensive Center blog is the second in a series of blog posts on the development of a statewide adult learning framework in Tennessee.   As mentioned in our April 13, 2021 blog post, Five Steps to Develop a Statewide Adult Learning Framework, representatives from the Region 5 Comprehensive Center and Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) partnered to develop a framework to plan and deliver high-quality…

Studies have demonstrated that Teacher Preparation Programs (TPPs) matter, and more specifically, that they “can improve teachers' preparedness and persistence by increasing requirements for practice teaching and methods-related coursework”.1 And, research that disentangles the effects of teacher recruitment and preparation demonstrates that TPPs contribute uniquely to teachers’ self-perceived instructional quality, which is related to features…