Teaching and Learning

The People: Focus on Students, Teachers and Educational Leaders

The Foundation's work in education is based on what we know about the conditions required for learning. Learning is a complex cognitive activity that cannot be rushed. It requires considerable time and periods of practice to build expertise.

Learning requires the active involvement of the student. Students learn best when they participate in the school’s social life and perceive their education to be useful and relevant. They also succeed when they learn to take the initiative and become responsible for their learning.

You don’t change (school) performance without changing the instructional core. The relationship of the teacher and the student in the presence of content must be at the center of efforts to improve performance. If you can’t see it in the classroom, it’s not there.

Richard Elmore, Harvard School of Education

Teachers and education leaders have the challenging responsibility of creating effective learning environments. To meet the wide range of student learning, the teaching profession requires specialized knowledge and skills. Teachers need ongoing support, high quality instructional materials and good systems to obtain information on student learning. In addition, when teachers work within a professional community of practice, student learning improves.

Our objective is to build education systems that provide students with effective and qualified teachers in every class, every day, by investing in the following.

Assessment of Student Learning.

• Tools that provide real-time assessment of student learning to teachers and enable evaluation of instruction and student needs.
• New comprehensive assessments that include higher level thinking and multiple dimensions of student development.

Professional Learning Communities.

• School based communities of practice to improve instruction and to support teachers’ ongoing learning to increase student success.

Performance Assessment Systems.

• Meaningful assessment systems that use multiple indicators of effectiveness, including student success factors.
• Training central office, principals, and teachers in use of assessments.

Human Resources Systems & Practices.

• Improved systems to recruit, assess, support, and retain effective teachers and leaders.

Innovations in Technology.

• Technology resources to expand content knowledge, enrich curriculum, and free up teachers’ time for individual work with students – for all teachers.