"Using Education Indicators: A Forum Guide for State and Local Education Agencies" was developed to provide timely and useful information on education indicators, how their collection and use have changed over time, and how agencies use them strategically. Since the publication of the 2005 document "Forum Guide to Education…

This toolkit is designed to help school- and district-based practitioners engage in a continuous improvement effort. It provides an overview of continuous improvement and focuses on the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle. It includes tools and resources that practitioners can use to implement a continuous improvement effort in their own schools, districts,…

The primary purpose of the District Capacity Assessment (DCA) is to assist school districts to implement effective innovations that benefit students. The "capacity" of a district to facilitate building-level implementation refers to the systems, activities, and resources that are necessary for schools to successfully adopt and sustain…

A Regional Education Agency (REA) functions as a partner with local districts and the State Educational Agency (SEA). REAs provide training, guidance and support intended to enable school districts to operate efficiently and improve their student outcomes. The primary purpose of this Regional Capacity Assessment (RCA) is to assist regional…

The passage of ESSA in 2015 created a novel mandate for States to develop school accountability systems that use alternative measures of school quality beyond test scores. This created an opportunity for States to be innovative and make new forms of data available that could potentially lead to new strategies for improving schools. This study…

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), originally passed in 1965, is the primary federal law related to K-12 schooling. Title I and Title II-A are core ESEA programs, and they intend to help provide all students with equal access to education by providing financial assistance to schools and districts with a high percentage of students…

The Sustainability Rubric is a tool for SEAs to use in assessing the sustainability of any reform initiative (for example, implementing an educator effectiveness system). The rubric introduces a succinct description of the three primary categories of sustainability: context for sustaining reform, system capacity and performance management. The…

This companion document to the "Sustainability Rubric" (see ED611436) contains a series of exercises designed to answer the question, "I want to make our reforms sustainable--where do I start?" The workbook is designed to help a designated facilitator lead a series of meetings for the appropriate team in a State Education…