The National Standards and Benchmarks for Effective Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools (NSBECS) were published in 2012 to serve as both a guide and assessment tool for PK-12 Catholic school effectiveness and sustainability. The NSBECS rest on the conviction that adhering to these standards and benchmarks with fidelity will result in highly…

Results on the National Assessment for Education Progress and the Program for International Student Assessment show that high school mathematics instruction is past due for a redesign. Despite calls for reform going back at least four decades, the structure of math instruction has remained largely the same. In April 2018, the National Council of…

Writing practices are seen to be essential for professional engineers, yet many engineering students and academics struggle with written communication, despite years of interventions to improve student writing. Much has been written about the importance of getting engineering students to write, but there has been a little investigation of…

In this "Open Dialogue: Peer Response," the author notes that in the initial paper, "Contributions of Educational Psychology to Understanding Student Learning: What Has Been Discovered - What More Could Be Done?" Entwistle lays out a useful summary of the way that psychology has contributed to an understanding of student…

Motivation cannot be measured directly but has to be evaluated through other indirect measurements, of which questionnaires are the most common. This chapter presents the results from the development and use of a model to approach motivation in the science classroom from multiple theoretical and methodological perspectives. The model emerged from…

School innovation expert John B. Nash demonstrates how design thinking can be adapted successfully by busy school leaders seeking student-centered solutions to a range of challenges. Based on a decade of work teaching school leaders nationally and internationally, "Design Thinking in Schools" shows how leaders can adopt a design thinking…

Between 2012 and 2018, the U.S. Department of Education invested nearly $350 million in 22 Comprehensive Technical Assistance (TA) Centers that operated across the nation. These Centers were charged with delivering TA that builds the capacity of state education agencies (SEAs) to support local education agencies in improving student outcomes.…

Between 2012 and 2018, the U.S. Department of Education invested nearly $350 million in 22 Comprehensive Technical Assistance (TA) Centers operating across the nation. These Centers were charged with delivering TA that builds the capacity of state education agencies (SEAs) to support local educational agencies (LEAs) in improving student outcomes.…

In 2012, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) introduced the Next Accreditation System, which requires institutions to engage in an annual process of evaluation and improvement. To that end, an institution's Graduate Medical Education Committee (GMEC) must demonstrate effective oversight of the institution's…

Nationally, the number of charter schools opening and the enrollment size at charters is on the rise. But what happens when charter schools are low performing? For most charter schools and their authorizers, closing low-performing schools seems inevitable. However, school closures have dramatic impacts on students, families, and communities --…

Few studies have examined how professional learning communities (PLCs) engage in collaborative inquiry over multiple years. This dissertation describes how a PLC with high school science teachers, district-based coaches, and university researchers conducted collective inquiries over five years to improve science instruction. The PLC was situated…

Much has been written about requirements in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) related to school classification, particularly with respect to approaches for determining if a school should be identified for support. However, less attention has been given to methods for determining when a school's performance is sufficient to exit such…

This brief reviews the details of major proposals from policy makers and policy organizations to streamline and reform income-driven repayment of federal student loans. The brief identifies encouraging consensus on a number of important details, as well as some areas of remaining divergence.

America's educational system is graduating high school students who are unable to meet the literacy demands of the 21st Century. To be successful, a student must be able to gain knowledge, act as a problem solver, and possess the ability to make informed decisions in all aspects of life (Goldman, 2012). A deficit in reading comprehension can…

Early childhood care and education helps build a strong foundation for learning. This brief document presents how the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) works with governments to improve the quality and availability of early education, especially for children most often left behind.