Learning Forward is very pleased that the U.S. Congress, in recognition of the value of professional learning to student learning and educator retention, has agreed to maintain level funding for Title II-A – the Supporting Effective Instruction Grants – in Fiscal Year 2024. We are particularly grateful for this result given the difficult budgeting environment…

Late last night, the Congressional Appropriations Committees unveiled their final agreement on fiscal year 2024 funding levels for the six appropriations bills that have not yet passed, including the Labor HHS Education bill. In this challenging budget environment and with an overall spending ceiling lower than in fiscal year 2023, the fact that this agreement…

Thomas Guskey’s five level framework for professional learning evaluation has our online community buzzing with appreciation and curiosity. Guskey’s evaluation framework is an adapted version of Kirkpatrick’s well-known four-level model of evaluation used mostly in the field of business. Guskey writes, in his article from The Learning Professional, that “early attempts to apply the [Kirkpatrick]…

Students across the U.S. continue to need help catching up on unfinished learning, even as the final round of federal pandemic aid money for schools sunsets this year. The funding situation complicates the already difficult decisions education leaders must make about which programs and services to prioritize in order to meet the learning needs of…

On Monday, President Biden released his fiscal year 2025 budget proposal. Constrained by a spending agreement that allows only a 1% overall increase in spending for fiscal year 2025, this is a relatively modest budget. Moreover, with action not yet completed on fully half of all fiscal year 2024 appropriations bills, including the Labor HHS…

One of the best ways to learn a language is to immerse yourself in it in multiple ways – listen, observe, study, practice. That approach to learning a new language also happens to be an effective way to learn and become proficient with Standards for Professional Learning. Reading the 11 standards is a great start,…

Learning Forward’s 2023 Annual Conference highlighted a theme of “Evidence into Action.” Not coincidentally, some of the featured conference speakers and sessions could easily be reframed as the reverse: “Action into Evidence” as we seek greater opportunities to generate rigorous research on effectiveness. Perhaps even more accurately, “How to drive change while learning from evidence…

When Congress returned to work in January, all members knew that fiscal year 2024 funding remained unresolved and that it faced another countdown to the federal government running out of money. Back in November, Congress passed a temporary spending bill to keep the federal government operating but that set two different deadlines for two different…

‘Tis the season for list-making and reflection! With the close of this past year, we reflect on your interests as readers of The Learning Professional. In 2023, the trending themes were continuous improvement and educator turnover. Nearly half of the most popular 2023 articles originate from the April issue on improvement stories and strategies, which…

Learning Forward’s top professional learning blog posts of 2023 focused on critical topics addressing priorities faced by educators globally. Our top blogs of the year surfaced innovative models and strategies for supporting educator growth and equipping leaders, schools, and systems to address the evolving needs of their students. Several of our top blogs featured educator…