History shows that learning and collaborative inquiry are the path forward. Continuous improvement can produce great thinking and learning that enables the continuation to support the most vulnerable children. Civil rights organizers, such as Septima Clark, are viewed as model improvers. Regarded by many as the queen of the Civil Rights Movement,…

When Dr. Tina Lupton and Dr. Timisha Barnes-Jones joined the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools, Opportunity Culture implementation was happening in the midst of COVID. Lupton, the executive director of professional learning, and Barnes-Jones, the area superintendent for a network of 15 transformation schools, used their experience in other…

"Pathways to Implementation" highlights innovative strategies and effective models in career pathways policy, implementation, and programming, as well as challenges states encounter in this work. This seven-part series addresses the key elements of Bellwether's framework for career pathways policy implementation. Each brief defines the…

Continuous improvement methods, widely used in fields such as medicine, can help educators identify and try out adjustments in practice, known as "change ideas," which contribute to better outcomes and more equitable systems for students. Since 2018, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has invested in 24 organizations across the…

Across the country, district-community teams are tackling pressing and complex educational challenges with Inclusive Innovation, an education R&D model that starts with centering the needs of those most impacted by these challenges. This paper shares the stories, solutions, outcomes, and learnings from years of deep collaboration in the words…

Collective efficacy has become a prominent feature in educational policy and practice with growing evidence that a strong sense of collective efficacy amongst educators leads to better outcomes for students. With growing interest in the importance of collective efficacy and how to cultivate it, the Collective Efficacy Tracking Tool was created to…

Data-informed decision making is considered important for school improvement. Working in data teams is a promising strategy for implementing data use in schools. Data teams consist of teachers and school leaders, who collaboratively analyze data to solve educational problems at their school. Studies show that school leaders can enable and hinder…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine data use practices within a cross-sector initiative involving high school career academies. It discerns how partners used data to assess the public value of academies and address equity concerns. Design/methodology/approach: A case study methodology was applied to examine cross-sector activities…

County offices of education (COEs) are expected to provide ongoing support to districts and other local education agencies to drive continuous improvement within California's education system. Fulfilling this role has required COEs to carry out their historical role as compliance monitors while simultaneously developing the necessary mindsets,…

This issue of Research Library Issues looks at the critical role and participation of libraries and librarians in supporting the data science revolution. The articles contained in this issue are: (1) Data Literacy as a Pathway to Data Science at Georgia Tech (Catherine Murray-Rust, with Ameet Doshi, Jay Forrest, Ximin Mi, and Alison Valk); (2) New…

This publication provides a guide for STEM Education Centers (SECs) and Centers for Teaching and Learning (CTLs) to carry out a self-assessment process focusing on their role(s) in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) education. These resources were developed to assist centers in framing their contributions to…

There are at least 39 million Americans who have attended college but needed to stop out before earning a degree. The "Degree Reclamation Playbook" supports practitioners seeking to reengage this population, capture the momentum of existing credits, and bring students across the degree finish line. Drawing on more than a decade of work,…

Of the five boroughs, Bronx schools consistently enroll the largest number of homeless students (STH). Of the 114,659 STH enrolled in the City's 33 school districts during the 2017-18 academic year, 37,484 attended schools in the Bronx (NYSED, 2018). Almost one-third (10,804) of these students were enrolled in schools in District 10. Although…

Although the number of countries conducting large-scale assessments has increased significantly over the past two decades, this has not necessarily led to the effective use of learning assessment data in policy-making and planning. To better understand the reasons for this, the UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP)…

The school librarian has a critical role to play in the 21st-century school learning environment. However, because of the constant changes in K-12 school environments and the difficult decisions administrators must make about allocating money to best help students, school librarians must rigorously document their professional growth and impact.…