Theory and empirical work suggest that teachers' social capital influences school improvement efforts. Social ties are prerequisite for social capital, yet little causal evidence exists on how malleable factors, such as instructional management approaches, affect teachers' ties. In this cluster-randomized trial, we apply a decision-making…

The Success By 6® (SB6) initiative is designed to support early care and education centers in improving and sustaining quality in Pennsylvania's Keystone STARS Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS). This SB6 evaluation report examines implementation and outcomes. The findings have implications for SB6 continous quality improvement process…

The Success By 6® (SB6) initiative is designed to support early care and education centers in improving and sustaining quality in Pennsylvania's Keystone STARS Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS). The SB6 evaluation report examines implementation and outcomes. The findings have implications for SB6 continous quality improvement process…

This paper reports on findings from a broader piece of research aimed at investigating the ways in which head teachers experience a new teacher evaluation policy in Portugal, particularly in regard to the challenges and perceived effects of the policy on school and on teacher development. Data were collected through a questionnaire with open and…

Limitations of the education doctorate (EdD) and the emergence of professional practice doctorates have influenced those offering the EdD to re-envision, re-define, and reclaim the EdD as the degree of choice for the next generation of educational leaders. Colleges of education faculty members have used the Carnegie Project on the Education…

The "Tutors@UQ" programme provides an example of a formalised, institution-wide, cross-discipline, academic development programme to enhance the quality of teaching that has been maintained for seven years despite a pattern of substantial organisational change. We present a case study of the programme framed around a four-phase model of…

Background: The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 (HHKA) required schools to make changes to meals provided to children. Rural school districts have limited resources, with increased obesity rates and local food insecurity. In this study we sought to understand the perceptions of rural food service directors and the barriers to implementing…

Many students enter higher education with poor preparation for college mathematics courses. These students are often placed through high-stakes placement testing into developmental coursework that bear no credit towards graduation, but many students who begin in developmental coursework never succeed in a college-level mathematics course. Recent…

This paper seeks to better understand how community colleges in Florida planned to implement a new sweeping state policy pertaining to developmental education. Via a cluster analysis, we identify three distinct patterns in the ways in which the colleges responded to the policy: reformers, responders, and resisters. Further, we find that these…

This article illustrates the value of large-scale impact evaluations with counterfactual components. It begins by exploring the limitations of small-scale impact studies, which do not allow reliable inference to a wider population or which do not use valid comparison groups. The paper then describes the design features of a recent large-scale…

The "'Literacy Octopus' Dissemination Trial" aimed to test the impact on pupil outcomes of disseminating research summaries and evidence-based resources to schools. The materials aimed to support teaching and learning of Key Stage 2 literacy and were created by leading organisations with experience of engaging schools in evidence use.…

The Achieve Together Bournemouth Partnership ("the Partnership") was a pilot collaboration between Teach First, Teaching Leaders, and The Future Leaders Trust. It was a new initiative that aimed to work with primary and secondary schools and the wider community in two socially deprived areas of Bournemouth (Boscombe and West Howe) to…

The heightened mobility of resources, ideas, and cultural practices across national borders--commonly known as "globalization"--entails changes in the contexts in which US research universities operate. We draw on recent developments in neo-institutional theory to understand these changes and their implications for the ways in which US…

Under waivers to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, the federal government required states to identify schools where targeted subgroups of students have the lowest achievement and to implement reforms in these "Focus Schools." In this study, we examine the Focus School reforms in the state of Kentucky. The reforms in this state are…

Success for All (SFA), one of the best-known school reform models, aims to improve the reading skills of all children but is especially directed at schools that serve large numbers of students from low-income families. First implemented in 1987, SFA combines a challenging reading program, whole-school reform elements, and an emphasis on continuous…