The Learning Principal

Over the past year, the Leadership Team Institute 2026-27 brought together over 30 leaders from seven teams from state and regional organizations and districts in Maryland and Delaware to learn about high-functioning team leadership, build their leadership team capacity, implement solutions to problems of practice, and create actionable professional learning plans that support growth at all levels.

Sustainability is an important but often elusive goal in educational improvement. Too often, even successful initiatives follow a predictable pattern: They begin with great promise and enthusiasm only to fade away after pilot projects and initial trainings end, funding runs out, or leaders move on to new roles.

As the flowers bloom in Washington, D.C. and the temperatures climb, Congress once more turns its attention to education funding. Like each year in recent memory, education advocates must again make the case that professional learning merits federal investment.

Springtime signals all types of transformation. Mother Nature shifts from browns to greens, communities emerge from winter routines, and in schools, educator turnover triggers a domino effect. One predictable byproduct of turnover is gaps in knowledge about the steps needing to connect this year’s improvement efforts to a logical sequence for next school year. When leadership transitions occur, improvement work can easily stall through omissions, lost momentum, and unnecessary restarts.

Media contact: Gail Paul, gail.paul@learningforward.org NEW YORK CITY– Education publisher and professional learning organization Learning Forward announced its newest issue of The Learning Professional magazine is a recommended resource for professionals attending a national education conference focused on the science of learning.

Coaching is most effective when it builds problem-solving skills and self-efficacy in coachees. To achieve this, effective coaches structure their coaching conversations in intentional ways to promote and support a client’s thinking rather than simply offering advice or suggestions to address the immediate problem. These coaching decisions not only promote professional growth but foster ownership and accountability for implementation and ownership of outcomes.

For those of us who can think way back and recall the Maytag repairman commercials, we may remember chuckling about the guy’s predicament of coming into work each day and dealing with unyielding loneliness (as the appliances never seemed to need servicing). Fast forward to now, and the flood of social media content is enough to fill anyone’s bucket. Yet behind the faces of TikTok or Instagram, behind the thousands or tens of thousands of followers is often unexpected loneliness.

Media contact: Gail Paul, gail.paul@learningforward.org The Action Guide – Ohio Standards for Professional Learning is a new resource now available on the Ohio Standards for Professional Learning webpage. In a recent update to its constituents, the Ohio State Board of Education announced the availability of the new action guide, which is designed to help educators and leaders develop effective, systemwide professional learning.

On April 3rd, President Trump released his fiscal year 2027 (FY27) budget request, which includes requests for the U.S. Department of Education. Although the budget request maintains funding for some major education programs like Title I and IDEA, it requests that Congress enact significant cuts to other programs including Title II-A, the primary federal funding stream for professional learning.

In this second part of Learning Forward’s blog series on the CalTex Curriculum-Based Professional Learning Network, we’re highlighting the work of Grow Public Schools, a charter network focused on serving students in the underserved areas of Kern County, California. Two schools—Grow Academy Arvin and Grow Academy Shafter—are participating in Learning Forward’s latest CBPL Network, which launched in fall 2025. For more background on the CalTex CBPL Network, please see our first blog post here.