The National Literacy Trust's Young Readers Programme has always worked successfully with schools and libraries in areas of deprivation for over 15 years. The Trust staff have recently started some pilot work with looked-after children both in residential and foster care. As part of this work they undertook some desk-based research to assess the…

Although response to intervention (RTI) has been widely discussed in education literature and is increasingly being implemented in schools throughout the U.S., few studies provide empirical evidence of improved school-wide student outcomes. Presented here are data and an effect size analysis of school-wide student reading gains in five elementary…

If Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney wins the November election, his ascension could endanger--or dismantle--key Obama administration education initiatives and lead to a slimmed-down and less activist U.S. Department of Education. Scaled back Education Department and cloudy prospects for Obama initiatives are among the scenarios. But…

These are exciting times in American education. While higher education has been preoccupied with its own challenges, its colleagues in K-12 have been adopting new standards, building new assessments and curricula, and redefining success for America's schools. For decades, the end-goal and primary success measure of most school systems was high…

Disciplines and professions each have their own methods of inquiry. This article outlines the commonalities as well as the differences and describes the relationship between the disciplines and the professions. The emphasis is on consulting because this is the profession with which we are concerned. There are three different approaches in…

Both districts and individual schools have a very clear set of goals and skills for their students to achieve and master. In fact, except in rare cases, districts and schools develop very detailed goals they wish to pursue. In most cases, unfortunately, only the teachers and staff at a particular school or district-level office are aware of the…

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) and the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) joined hands in 2005 to enhance dramatically implementation of the "High Schools That Work" ("HSTW") improvement design in the state. Between 2005 and 2010, nearly 50 high schools in five cohorts joined the Texas Enhanced "HSTW" Network…

This article presents a partnership effort among managers, trainers, and employees to spring to life performance improvement using the performance templates (P-T) approach. P-T represents a process model as well as a method of training leading to performance improvement. Not only does it add to our repertoire of training and performance management…

On 1 January 2012, early-childhood and out-of-school-hours care services were mandated to begin working under a new framework, designed to deliver greater consistency in service provision across the sector. With the aim of raising quality and driving continuous improvement through consistency among services and service ratings, the National…

This paper considers the importance of providing technical training opportunities for Early Career Researchers (ECRs) worldwide through the case study of a MATLAB training programme, which was proposed, organised, managed and evaluated by a team of five ECRs at the University of Southampton. The effectiveness of the programme in terms of the…

What can family members learn about each other from writing together? What sense of community can develop between family members and across families as they write together? What areas of culture and community can be realized as families write together? These are the questions that fostered this current inquiry into a family writing project. Four…

Schools and districts are inundated with data from a variety of sources. As a result, using data to guide instructional planning can be daunting for teachers and schools. While schools and districts are dealing with shrinking budgets and growing demands for high student achievement, an investment in school-based coaching can provide exponential…

Every district wants its schools to shine, and more are recognizing that, in order to raise performance, they need well-trained principals who can shake up the status quo and create an environment where all students flourish. Indeed, in a six-year study analyzing data from 180 schools in nine states, researchers from the Universities of Minnesota…

The idea of teacher leadership holds an immense and intuitive appeal. Most educators agree that teacher leaders are essential to fostering a climate of authentic and robust leadership and learning across a school. Teacher leadership is peer leading at its most authentic, demanding, and empowering. While the value of teacher leadership may be…

Teacher education and professional development prepare teachers with up-to-date knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary for effective teaching. To sustain this, however, hinges on continued professional learning within schools. Research shows that establishing long-term conditions that allow teachers to learn continuously from one another…