School district officials have faced the urgent task in recent years of ensuring that all schools, not just a lucky few, benefit from sure-footed leadership by professionals who know how to focus on instruction and improve it. The question boils down to this: How can districts develop a pipeline of great school principals? Research about a Wallace…

Most students with disabilities participate in state assessments with or without accommodations [based on each student's Individualized Education Program (IEP)]. A small number of students with the most severe or profound intellectual disabilities participate in an alternate assessment based on alternate achievement standards (AA-AAS). Until…

School district officials have faced the urgent task in recent years of ensuring that all schools, not just a lucky few, benefit from sure-footed leadership by professionals who know how to focus on instruction and improve it. The question boils down to this: How can districts develop a pipeline of great school principals? Research about a Wallace…

Since the passage of No Child Left Behind, large-scale assessments have come to play a central role in federal and state education accountability systems. Teachers and parents have expressed a number of concerns about their state testing programs, such as too much time devoted to testing and the high-stakes use of testing for teacher evaluation.…

To remain internationally competitive, states needed clearer, higher, and comparable K-12 learning standards aligned with college and career expectations, and as ambitious as those of the countries that lead the world in education. Idaho's old academic standards were not preparing students for postsecondary education, which contributed to the…

Approximately one-third of American freshmen at two-year and four-year colleges require remedial coursework and over 40 percent of employers rate new hires with a high school diploma as "deficient" in their overall preparation for entry-level jobs. Yet, over the past decade, as these students marched through America's public education…

Given what system leaders must accomplish with limited resources, they must make bold decisions about their current investments to achieve high-priority goals related to implementing college- and career-ready standards. This workbook is designed to guide users through a five-step process of understanding what professional learning is available in…

In early November 2013, the authors started talking about visiting the Hurley School, a dual-language school in Boston, Massachusetts. The Hurley School had spent considerable time transitioning to the Common Core State Standards on literacy, but little time addressing the shifts in math. They worried that math classes were no longer rigorous…

Three attempts to improve the state approval process in accreditation are described, and their implications for improving the process are discussed. (JD)

Feeling that social studies has been sidelined by a test-driven focus on math and English/language arts, subject-matter specialists from more than a dozen states met last week with representatives of content-area groups to brainstorm ways to improve academic standards in that subject. The two-day gathering in Charlotte, N.C., is the third convened…

In the current era of mathematics standards, whether they are Common Core State Standards or other state standards, effective vertical mathematics teams offer an opportunity for teachers to grow professionally through shared experiences, for leadership to grow among the faculty, and for the school to change its perspective on the teaching and…

In 2008, the Council for Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governors Association started discussing the possibility of moving away from separate state standards. State education leaders were concerned that existing state standards weren't rigorous enough. So, in 2009, 48 states signed on to develop the Common Core State…

In 1996, Kansas launched the nation's most sweeping attempt to radically transform the child welfare system by implementing a privatized form of managed care. Four years later, the child welfare system shows signs of instability and seems very much in transition. This report examines the current status of the child welfare system in Kansas and…

For years California has been a leader in public education. In 1999, the state implemented some of the strongest content standards in the country through its main accountability metric, the Academic Performance Index (API). The state has also signed onto the Common Core State Standards, taking important steps to ensure its students are college-…

Technological progress has consistently driven remarkable advances in the U.S. economy, yet K-12 education sees little technological change compared to other sectors, even as U.S. K-12 students increasingly lag behind students in other nations. This proposal considers how we can take a signature American strength--innovation--and apply it to K-12…