How can states help ensure that their systems are providing schools and educators with the essential data for improvement efforts? One powerful strategy is to collaborate with partners using a continuous improvement approach. Six states have been doing just that--working together to investigate and address specific, high-priority, high-impact ways…

Good education changes lives. It is therefore unsurprising that improved schooling plays a central part in most development strategies. At the same time, the expansion of school attainment alone is not sufficient to guarantee improved welfare. This open access book focuses on one country in West Africa, Togo, to explore what a country that has…

Why are equity visits such a critical first step to increasing opportunity and access for our under-served students? Because they take instructional rounds to a new level, providing a powerful lens for investigating the intersections of equity and instruction. After all, how can we possibly deliver equitable learning experiences. That is where…

The urgent need to equip young people with the knowledge and skills necessary to be agile lifelong learners who can thrive in a rapidly changing economy has never been clearer. As a result, many school districts have been shifting their focus, aiming to better prepare all high school students to graduate ready to succeed both in college and in the…

Strategic planning and performance management are not new concepts; however, education agencies and other nonprofit organizations have struggled to embrace and use the concepts, especially in unison. The strategic performance management (SPM) process provides a mechanism to bring performance management to state education agencies (SEAs), local…

An alternative mathematics preparation program for K-8 teachers is described as an existence proof that steadily increasing effectiveness of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) preparation is possible. The program is based on treating every lesson in each of five mathematics content and methods courses as objects of study.…

A yearlong classroom-based intervention was designed to explore the reading-writing connection in second-language literacy by examining whether the development of reading improves writing and vice versa. Middle school learners of English as a foreign language (N = 300) in South Korea were assigned to three treatments that involved extensive…

Recent federal legislation has created strong incentives for states to adopt principal evaluation systems, many of which include new measures of principal effectiveness such as estimates of student growth and changes in school climate. Yet, there has been little research on principal evaluation systems and no state-by-state analysis of the…

This mixed-methods study examines middle school students' academic language development in the context of a year-long professional development project titled, Developing Content Area Academic Language (DCAAL). The purpose of DCAAL was to partner middle school teachers (n = 8) with a team of university researchers to explore how to integrate…

This paper reports the outcomes of an experimental evaluation of "Direct Instruction Spoken English" ("DISE"), an English language curriculum that focuses on developing English speaking, listening, and comprehension skills in English Learners (ELs). Twenty-nine middle schools in three states were randomly assigned to teach…

This paper reports the outcomes of an experimental evaluation of "Direct Instruction Spoken English (DISE)," an English language curriculum that focuses on developing English speaking, listening, and comprehension skills in English Learners (ELs). Twenty-nine middle schools in three states were randomly assigned to teach "DISE"…

This article discusses the current international emphasis on educational improvement and, particularly, approaches to developing teachers' professional learning. I begin by arguing for the importance of Canadian narratives and evidence within global debates. I turn then to an example of a recently conducted study of the state of educators'…

South Africa, like many developing countries, is heavily burdened by high dropout and unemployment rates and an undersupply of skilled workers. Grade retention is a common practice when learners do not meet the specific requirements--especially in countries with limited socio-economic resources. In South Africa, 52% of the learners are retained at…

The last five years have been active and noisy ones for the impact of technology and online education on the future of colleges and universities. Much has been said to disparage the traditional institutional model and champion strategies of disrupting or "unbundling" higher education, powered by the explosion of Web-based learning…

Learning quantum mechanics is challenging, even for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students. Research-validated interactive tutorials that build on students' prior knowledge can be useful tools to enhance student learning. We have been investigating student difficulties with quantum mechanics pertaining to the double-slit experiment in…