What is the state of university-based principal preparation programs? How are these essential training grounds of future school leaders viewed--by themselves as well as by the school districts that hire their graduates? Do the programs need to improve? If so, by what means? This publication seeks to help answer those questions by bringing together…

In recent months business leaders across the state have committed to a new effort to make Michigan a top ten education state by 2030. The Michigan Achieves initiative is designed to make that ambitious and urgent goal happen for "all" students in the state. These leaders know with certainty what others in Michigan are beginning to grasp:…

All across the country, leaders in colleges and universities are asking the same question: What can we do to improve student success, especially for the low-income students and students of color whose graduation rates often lag behind? This second practice guide: "Using Data to Improve Student Outcomes: Learning from Leading Colleges"…

The United States Department of Education's (the Department's) "FY 2015 Annual Performance Report" (APR) and "FY 2017 Annual Performance Plan" (APP) provide information relative to the "FY 2014-18 Strategic Plan." Again this year, the Department has consolidated its APR and APP in an effort to provide a more complete…

In February 2012 the US Department of Education (ED) granted 11 states the first round of waivers from some of the requirements of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in exchange for other commitments. As the Data Quality Campaign (DQC) noted in "Why Data Matter in ESEA Reauthorization: Recommendations to ensure data are used to…

In this study, an investigation into the proper use of weekly quizzes in chemical engineering program has been conducted. The traditional weekly homework assignments were replaced with weekly paper quizzes. Achievement levels of students were compared with those students who learn through traditional homework assignments only. The results show the…

If our schools were a research project, we'd say that while some aspects of our schools are highly valid, our overall academic systems aren't reliable. If educators are to meet the challenge of leaving no child behind, schools will have to improve with much greater reliability. In the mid-1990s, a group of British secondary schools decided to work…

Career and technical education (CTE) in Charlotte County, Florida, has a new identity thanks to the creativity and marketing by the K-12 CTE teachers who decided to make a difference. When one walks into any of the elementary or middle school STEM labs, or high school Career and Professional Education (CAPE) Academies, he/she sees a packed house…

Conventional thinking holds that districts and schools face a strategic decision between two fundamentally different alternatives: make or buy? The former refers to planning, designing, and enacting school-specific improvement initiatives. The latter refers to contracting with external providers of schoolwide improvement programs. However, there…

Three big-city districts--Chicago, Milwaukee, and New York--have terminated federal grants aimed at promoting performance-based compensation plans and professional development for teachers and principals. Overall, the 2010 Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) grants to the three districts would have provided an $88 million payout over five years--nearly 7…

John Muir Elementary School in San Francisco is like countless other schools in cities across the United States. The student body comprises mostly lower income, African American and Latino students who--despite being just as intelligent as their white and Asian counterparts--traditionally underachieve on many academic measures. Talented,…

"One of the most persistent findings from research on school improvement is, in fact, the symbiotic relationship between professional development and school improvement efforts" (Hawley & Valli, 1999, p. 129). These researchers, and others in the field, argue that there must be a direct relationship between the professional…

Journalism today--like almost every other profession--has been revolutionized by technology. And just as the workplace has changed, so too must the teaching spaces in which the next generation of professionals will be trained. When renovating their campuses to meet these 21st century needs, many administrators will be tempted simply to bulldoze…

This study was carried out to ascertain the quality assurance of teachers (lecturers) in the implementation of the curriculum of Technical and Vocational Education (TVE) in Colleges of Education (Technical) in North Central Nigeria. Two research questions were formulated and answered in this study. Survey research and evaluation designs were…

To meet the growing demand for teacher learning opportunities, the educational community must create scalable professional development models and study their effectiveness. In this chapter, we argue that design-based implementation research (DBIR) is ideally suited to these efforts, and we use two research projects as illustrative cases: CSR…