What’s a Global Professional Learning Community, you ask?  Global PLC’s are interactive and informative sessions for you to swap ideas and strategies – just straight-talk conversations with your colleagues and friends about teaching.

So, what do you want to talk about?  Send an email to info@rapsa.org to let us know what topics interest you, and let’s get this discussion started!

Each time you talk with your colleagues about what’s going on in your classroom, you are doing research. Each time you rework a lesson, tweak it just so, you’re doing a form of research.

Read about the benefits of teacher research, and share the things you’re mulling over in your classroom. The RAPSA Lounge is your dedicated meeting room for conversation and ideas.

Meeting the Challenge of Low Graduation-Rate High Schools

Everyone Graduates Center and Jobs for the Future, July, 2009

In his first major address to Congress, President Barack Obama envisioned a country where dropping out “is no longer an option.” He linked improving high school graduation rates to restoring the nation’s economic and political standing in the world.

Since then, federal officials and educators have focused on transforming or replacing the 2,000 high schools that produce more than half of U.S. dropouts. No longer can these failing schools, which routinely graduate fewer than two-thirds of their students, “go it alone.” Substantially increasing the number of young people who earn a high school diploma and are ready for college will require effective partnerships among the federal government, states, communities, and school districts.