This brief outlines a series of proposals for using federal policy to bolster school leadership. The Elementary & Secondary Education Act (ESEA) should highlight the unique role that principals play by targeting funding within the law to build principals' capacity as instructional leaders, culture builders and talent managers. ESEA should also…

This document provides a list of recommended existing resources for state Part C and Part B 619 staff and technical assistance (TA) providers to utilize to support evaluation planning for program improvement efforts (including the State Systemic Improvement Plan, SSIP). There are many resources available related to evaluation and evaluation…

Nursing is a practice profession that has long been regarded with esteem and trust by the public. The education of nurses is a process that has evolved over the last 150 years from apprenticeship-based training to an academic program grounded in the arts and sciences. Nurses must successfully learn a rigorous academic curriculum, demonstrate…

In recent years, school districts have paid increased attention to closing opportunity and achievement gaps while raising performance standards for all students. Historically, teaching has been characterized as professionally isolating, with teachers often operating independently in their own classrooms. Compounding the effects of this isolation,…

"This is the piece that's been missing." This reaction is common among educators engaged in AIW Iowa, an initiative that engages teachers and administrators in professional learning communities that are improving student achievement, increasing student engagement, and building a schoolwide professional culture focused on improving…

Pedagogically, the term "bottleneck" refers to a moment when students may face barriers to understanding content in the process of learning. As instructors identify "bottlenecks" within their courses, they are faced with the challenge of how to best assist students in overcoming them. Further, most instructors want to know what selected teaching…

In a recent publication, Senge ("All systems go: the change imperative for whole system reform." Corwin Press, Thousand Oaks, 2010, x) stated "at no time in history has there been a more powerful need for a new vision of the purpose of education." Increasingly citizens, academics and practitioners are calling for radical…

The World Bank is clearly one of the most influential global intergovernmental operators for international development assistance. In recent decades, the Bank and other agencies have invested immense technical and financial resources in a troubled and unprecedented mission of revitalizing and restructuring the development of education in Africa. A…

This qualitative study examines a model of instructional coaching in a middle school using interviews and observations of both teachers and their coaches. During the 2012-2013 school year, Creekside Middle School implemented a new model of instructional coaching that differed from the traditional model of coaching; it focused on student learning…

The guiding question for this qualitative study centered on what it means to be a principal in a high school that has been put on notice as a failure and labeled "Program Improvement" (PI). The evidence shed light on the unique challenges, role expectations, and varying social conditions faced by two female principals as they managed…

The purpose of this case study is as follows: (1) to identify change within a single school, (2) to record and to categorize this change, and (3) to analyze this change within the targeted school, over a year, after implementation of a non-collaborative SIP through the perceptions of the instructional staff. This study explained how the Louisiana…

This article describes the experiences of some of the many families of the deaf and hard of hearing children who come to Shared Reading Saturdays at Northern Essex Community College (NECC) in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The program, which includes monthly gatherings and is coordinated by the NECC's Gallaudet University Regional Center, features deaf…

The large number of newly arrived individuals from other countries, particularly of young people, has had an enormous impact on the school system in Germany. The present study investigated requirements for successful intercultural school development. The study used investigative group discussions, where the groups were composed of teachers and…

An intervention study was conducted with preschool teachers to address their beliefs and practice in the area of language and literacy. A total of 27 preschool teachers, each from different early childcare centers, participated in three 1-day professional learning sessions over the course of 9 months. Learning sessions focused on three different…

Challenged by increased globalisation and fast technological development, we carried out an experiment in the third semester of a global business engineering programme aimed at identifying conditions for training students in dealing with complex and ill-structured problems of forming a new business. As this includes a fuzzy front end, learning…