Despite evidence supporting the importance of school climate, little is known about how practitioners understand and use data from climate surveys to guide schoolwide improvement. The expanded use of school climate surveys underscores the importance of understanding how schools and districts are utilizing this evidence both to drive improvement…

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) requires states to have statewide accountability systems to help provide all children significant opportunity to receive a fair, equitable, and high-quality education, and to close educational achievement gaps. These systems must meet certain federal requirements, but states have some discretion in…

Each year, school systems build a plan for how to improve student learning for the coming year. This process involves reviewing student achievement and student progress, establishing priorities, and building a budget aligned to these priorities using all available funding sources. Starting in the 2018-2019 school year, in preparation for the…

In America today, families in almost every urban community have some kind of public school choice. This report focuses on "public school choice," under which families are able to choose from both an array of traditional public schools and public charter schools. Public school choice has grown rapidly in the past 20 years; new charter…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of a checklist, focusing on the detailed analysis of the requirement of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) standards related to strategic management and innovation area, for evaluation of implementation readiness in a business school setting.…

Using a quantitative study the researchers examined perceptions regarding school climate of parents with children who attend urban schools, based on several dimensions: quality of the instructional program, support for learning, school climate/environment for learning, parent/school relationships, and resource management. Of the 150 administered…

As part of the evaluation of the Strategic School Funding for Results (SSFR) project, American Institutes for Research (AIR) conducted surveys of principals, teachers, and members of School Site Councils (SSCs) to gather information on the attitudes and perspectives regarding the implementation of key components of the SSFR model in Twin Rivers…

In Nebraska, pursuant to Nebraska statutes 79-1014, districts must submit a Limited English Proficiency (LEP) Plan by mid October of each year as specified by statute. The LEP plan is meant to specifically address the needs of Limited English Proficient (LEP) students and will be used in calculation of state funding for the following fiscal school…

To meet the more rigorous expectations embodied in new college- and career-ready standards, students will need teachers who teach in ways that are distinctly different than how most have been teaching. Students will need, for example, English and science teachers who give students more guided practice in reading nonfiction texts that are more…

The Strategic School Funding for Results (SSFR) interviews began in November of 2009 with focus group interviews of the Superintendent's Cabinet. Individual principal interviews were conducted between January 15 and January 22 of 2010. Two elementary, two middle-, and one high school principal were interviewed. The AIR/PLP (American Institutes for…

In 2010, unprecedented levels of resources began to flow through state education agencies (SEAs) to support dramatic change in persistently low-performing schools under the expanded federal School Improvement Grant (SIG) program. The challenge for states is to leverage the federal investment to drive dramatic and sustainable change efforts in…

Flexibility is a lever for change that occupies an increasingly prominent place in federal strategies for educational improvement. Flexibility assumes that local actors are in the best position to identify the most serious problems facing schools and students and to determine how to solve them. Consequently, these actors should be given greater…

The charge of the Committee on Strategies for Excellence was to examine the current status of elementary and secondary education in Iowa, and to investigate ways in which school districts could be educationally more productive. The report brings together recommendations from various state and national reports, reviews the literature, and makes…

This technical manual describes the School Assessment Survey (SAS), a multidimensional questionnaire that uses teachers' perceptions to measure key organizational characteristics of a school. Developed to take advantage of recent developments in organizational theory and school effectiveness research, the SAS instrument can be used to identify…

A research study of the implementation of "good ideas" in 14 schools came to the conclusion that differences in school organization and climate cause differences in the success of school improvement. Specific aspects of organization and climate in these schools, called factors of school context, are the following: resources, incentives,…