For the past 12 years, the author has worked with peer coaches in more than 40 countries, and has seen schools where peer coaches have collaborated with colleagues to improve teaching and learning in classrooms across the school. In other schools, coaches have played a critical role in creating a culture of collaboration that helps build the…

This report is based on an almost 5-year continual study of selected collaboratives engaged in education reform and improvement with a focus on science, math, and technology in schools serving K-12 students in rural America. This version of the final report of the study is primarily intended for use by educators, decision makers, and others who…

Discusses the rationale for applying management information systems (MIS's) to contract education programs, depicts an ideal MIS, and describes the MIS currently utilized in California. Suggests that computer-based MISs, such as California's Contract Education Data Inventory System, serve as invaluable aids in organizing and interpreting program…

This booklet gives smaller adult and community learning (ACL) providers and their partners a practical insight into how to adapt current approaches to quality improvement for their own institutions. The first sections set out how they can do the following: plan the process; collect, collate, and analyze data; make value judgements and act upon…

Partners in Quality is a research and development project sponsored by the Canadian Child Care Federation and its affiliates to explore how child care providers, parents, and other partners can work together to support and improve quality in child care. This booklet, in both English and French, supplements a series to support child care providers…

As public schools collaborate with the Head Start and child care communities to improve the quality of early childhood education and care, practitioners working with young children need guidance and support in implementing best practices in early learning. This manual provides guidance to teachers engaged in improving their programs in concert…

In 1992, the U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Department of Education jointly developed the Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps (JROTC) Career Academy model, which provides a framework for implementation of an innovative vocational education program designed to keep dropout-prone students in school. The program, which combines military…

The Alberta Initiative for School Improvement (AISI) is a bold approach to improving student learning by encouraging teachers, parents, and the community to work collaboratively to introduce innovative projects that address local needs. Initiated in 1999 by the Alberta Government and its partners, AISI provides targeted funding to school…

The U. S. is losing its competitive edge in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Thomas Friedman warns that America is not producing enough young people in STEM fields that are essential for entrepreneurship and innovation in the 21st century (The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, 2005). Blue ribbon…

Between 2001 and 2005, the state of Maine shifted the focus of its statewide high school improvement efforts to include an explicit focus on adolescent literacy. One trigger for that change in focus was a 5-school adolescent literacy initiative previously launched in a rural county under the federal Northeast and Islands Regional Educational…

Students who succeeded in school are almost always supported by their families, while other students struggle without support from home. For a school to develop a partnership program involving all parents in ways that increase student success requires new ways of thinking about family and community involvement. All schools need a purposeful,…

The purpose of this study was to explore the nature of recent educational reform efforts in Washington State and to determine what educators believe to be the most important future areas of focus. In particular, the researchers wanted to determine whether school-wide improvement efforts (i.e. School Improvement Plans (SIPs), School Improvement…