Linda Darling-Hammond, President and CEO of the Learning Policy Institute, is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education Emeritus at Stanford University where she founded the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education and served as the faculty sponsor of the Stanford Teacher Education Program, which she helped to redesign. In 2006, Darling-Hammond was named one of the nation’s ten most influential people affecting educational policy.

Guest: Dr. Stephanie Hirsh, executive director of Learning Forward. Learning Forward has more than 10,000 members and 40 state and provincial affiliates focused on building the capacity of leaders to establish and sustain highly effective professional learning. In this episode, we discuss professional learning and explore these questions:

What does effective professional learning look like?

How has ESSA’s definition of professional learning impacted the field?

What’s the number one motivator why educators become invested in professional learning?

How can professional learning be a high-leverage policy in helping to retain and support teachers in the profession?

What do millennial educators want in their professional learning?

What are concrete steps principals can take to help preserve Title II funding?

Sarah Silverman is a Senior Vice President at Whiteboard Advisors, a strategic consulting and communications firm. For over a decade, she has advised state leaders on education, assisting with the development of state policies that transform teacher and leader preparation, evaluation, and training. Prior to joining Whiteboard Advisors, she led the National Governors Association Education Division’s work on early care and K-12 education systems. Her research and writing have focused on the impact of state and national policy on social justice activism, teacher beliefs, talent management, early care and education, and ethics of education. In this episode, we talk with Sarah about the major trends in Edtech innovation, what we can learn from “big data” in K-12 education, ESSA implementation, and how these issues impact principals.

In this episode we speak with Thomas Toch, Director of FutureEd, about the critical role principals play in supporting effective teaching and the importance of teacher feedback. Toch is a former senior partner at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and director of the foundation’s Washington office. He is a former guest scholar at the Brookings Institution and has taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Toch helped launch Education Week, as a writer and co-managing editor.

Across the country, more than 8 million students are missing so many days of school that they are academically at risk. Chronic absence—missing 10 percent or more of school days due to absence for any reason, whether excused, unexcused, or as a result of suspensions—can translate into third-graders being unable to master reading, sixth-graders failing subjects and ninth-graders dropping out of high school. In this episode we speak with Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, about the causes of chronic absence, its impact on student success, and what policies and practices can fix it.

A record 114 million Americans turned out for the midterm elections. What were the results and what does it mean for education in 2019?

In this inaugural guest episode of NAESP HQ, NAESP Executive Director Dr. L. Earl Franks, CAE, discusses the results of the association's recently released report, The Pre-K–8 School Leader in 2018: A 10-Year Study. The survey of school leaders offers insights on the students they serve, attitudes about the current education climate, and the successes and challenges faced by today's working principals.

Michelle D. Young, Ph.D., is the Executive Director of the University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA) and a Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy at the Curry School of Education (University of Virginia). In this episode we talk with Dr. Young about the state of principal preparation and opportunities for principals to advocate for research-based leadership standards to improve how principals are prepared, developed, supervised and evaluated.

Charles Best leads DonorsChoose.org, a nonprofit website which enables anyone to help a classroom in need. Charles launched the organization in 2000 at a Bronx public high school where he taught history for five years. To date, teachers at more than 80% of all the public schools in America have created classroom project requests on DonorsChoose.org, and more than 3 million people have given to those projects. DonorsChoose.org is one of Oprah Winfrey's "ultimate favorite things" and made the cover of Fast Company as one of the "50 Most Innovative Companies in the World," the first time a charity has received such recognition. In this episode, we talk with Charles about the trajectory and evolution of DonorsChoose.org, Charles’ advice on leadership and advocacy, and DonorsChoose.org’s partnership with NAESP.

Hear a quick update on NAESP's advocacy priorities this fall, including professional development funding for principals in the FY19 budget bill, preschool development grants, and how you can take part in National Principals Month this October by having a member of Congress "shadow" you at your school.