Distributed leadership has been explored internationally as a leadership model that will promote and advance excellence in learning and teaching in higher education. This paper presents an assessment of how effectively distributed leadership was enabled at five Australian institutions implementing a collaborative teaching quality development…

The State of Wisconsin's YoungStar system was created by the Legislature and Governor in 2010 to "drive quality improvement in child care throughout the state." YoungStar uses a five-star system to rate child care providers based on several measures of quality, including staff education levels, learning environment, business methods, and…

On February 17, 2009, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The law had a very simple mission: kick-start an economic recovery through strategic investment. Deep within the law were a number of key education initiatives, including Race to the Top (RTT), which was a way to invest in the nation's education system…

Surveys and benchmarks continue to grow in importance for community colleges in response to several factors. One is the press for accountability, that is, for colleges to report the outcomes of their programs and services to demonstrate their quality and prudent use of resources, primarily to external constituents and governing boards at the state…

This article highlights several key findings from the research project sponsored by the National Staff Development Council. Data and findings drawn from this study will be used to establish benchmarks for assessing progress in professional development over time. Taken as a whole, this work will provide the most comprehensive picture and…

This paper presents the results of an investigation into the attitudes of School Administrators to the relationship between formal school registration and school improvement. It concerns a mandatory inspection-type registration process for all Non-Government Schools in Western Australia. Part of the aim of this registration process was to help…

The Higher Learning Commission (HLC), a commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (NCA), accredits Wyoming's seven community colleges. Institutional accreditation is a voluntary process that serves the critical purposes of quality assurance and institutional and program improvement. Colleges that are accredited by the HLC…

In this article, the authors share what they have learned in two distinct but complementary research projects that focus on institutional efforts to enhance student persistence and graduation--one funded by the Lumina Foundation for Education and the second by the College Board. Together, these projects have helped them develop a fuller picture of…

As higher education institutions (HEIs) look to be more commercial in their outlook they are likely to become more dependent on the successful implementation of projects. This article reports a benchmarking survey of PM maturity in a HEI, with the purpose of assessing its capability to implement projects. Data were collected via questionnaires…

What was accomplished and what was learned from United States Agency for International Development's (USAID) investment of over $733 million aimed at strengthening basic education systems in the developing world? These questions were addressed through an analysis of 286 documents drawn from 33 projects sponsored by the USAID between 1990 and 2005.…

The two-fold purpose of the study was to determine whether or not the Arkansas Leadership Academy's Master Principal Institute's (MPI) five curriculum content standards were aligned with the literature of effective educational leadership practices, and to ascertain if there were significant relationships among the principals' leadership practices…

In 2004, The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice published a report titled "Grading Vouchers: Ranking America's School Choice Programs." Its purpose was to measure every existing school choice program against the gold standard set by Milton and Rose Friedman: that the most effective way to improve K-12 education and thus ensure a stable…

Performance benchmarks are proposed to assist undergraduate psychology programs in defining their missions and goals as well as documenting their effectiveness. Experienced academic program reviewers compared their experiences to formulate a developmental framework of attributes of undergraduate programs focusing on activity in 8 domains:…

Educators are becoming more aware of the limitations of testing that simply measures student achievement at a single point in time, such as benchmark tests, locally constructed formative tests, conventional standardized tests, and state assessments used to determine adequate yearly progress under No Child Left Behind. Not surprisingly, school…

Curriculum auditing is a quality-control process. If a course is not meeting expectations, is not serving students, or needs adjustment, the Roanoke Valley (Virginia) Governor's School for Science and Technology employs benchmarking to attain data to fix the problem or move in another direction. (MLH)