This report paper highlights promising practices and trends in personalized learning and competency-based education for English learners and includes case studies from these schools: 

Integrate social and emotional learning throughout the day, in classrooms, during professional learning, and in meetings. This guide focuses on three areas, with 10-15 specific examples for each: Inclusive Welcome, Engaging Strategy, and Intentional Close.

Concise guide - updated in 2025 - that provides positive behavior support practices, a self-assessment tool and classroom decision-making chart, and classroom-based practice examples organized by topic, e.g., setting expectations, developing routines, using behavior-specific praise, responding to problem behavior, collecting and using behavior data, etc.

Listen to staff and leadership from schools tell their unique school improvement stories in this video collection, originally created to spotlight successful school turnaround practices. Topics include school culture, data practices, instructional improvement, career pathways, MTSS, family engagement, and more.

Based in existing research and best-practices, this guide provides a compass for the development of family engagement strategies, policies, and programs using a "dual capacity" approach that recognizes the roles and needs of both partners - parents and staff. For those doing family engagement work, this is one of the main go-to frameworks for thinking about this work.

There are many social emotional learning programs out there! These two guides provide detailed information for more than 40 SEL programs for PK-12 school and out-of-school time settings.

Learn how the P.K. Yonge School in Florida structured its tiered systems of support approach. The case study includes information on how "Student Success Teams" are organized and run, how "tiering" is done, and how the staff take an integrated view of academic and social emotional or behavioral support needs. 

The PEAR Holistic Student Assessment (HSA) is a universal social-emotional assessment tool (student survey) that can help you better understand each student's unique strengths and needs.

A lot of school climate and culture is "what's happening when adults are busy doing other things."  Use these resources from the Center on School Climate & Learning to involve a variety of students (not just natural or known leaders) in gathering student voice and pinpointing aspects of school climate/culture that need work and strategies for addressing them.

Learn how to shift from traditional parent-teacher open house and curriculum nights to teacher-facilitated sessions designed to help parents support their child's academic success:  Academic Parent-Teacher Teams (APTT).

School culture and climate is a critical component to any school.  This paper can help a school or district explore how to design schools around young people in order to support them on their positive youth development, including the importance of caring, trusting, and supportive relationships, high expectations, voice, choice and contribution, intentionally engaging learning experiences and consistency.