Proposal writing is an essential requirement for making progress in academics. Learning this skill necessitates support from a mentor to cultivate effective habits. It entails effective strategies from graduate students, such as literature reading and using online tools. Additionally, they must develop an understanding of resource accountability,…

Blaming teachers and schools for perceived or actual educational failures are popular tropes for justifying educational reforms in the United States. Critical educational research implicates neoliberalism in the normalized positioning of teachers and schools as the key suspects in educational failures. This article critiques the etiology of…

Amid the pedagogical and leadership shifts that the COVID pandemic placed on the K-12 educational landscape, the pandemic itself brought to light the systems that need to be in place for technology to be effectively integrated in classrooms and school buildings. The COVID transition period has produced a technology rebirth in K-12 schools across…

Building a culture of equity requires ensuring that leaders and school staff have a shared vision for what educational equity means, what it looks like, and how to get there. It also necessitates a willingness to hold people accountable to the vision and the work needed to make it a reality. This takes a clear road map for achieving the consistent…

With mounting calls for the justice system to declare literacy a civil right, and with a growing emphasis on accelerating reading achievement at the federal, state, and local levels, educational leaders are under increased pressure to implement practices that will not only increase reading achievement but will prove sustainable for years to come.…

This article adopts a process evaluation approach to identify the challenges and opportunities in scaled implementation of early childhood education (ECE) in Pakistan's most populous province, Punjab. It reports findings from mixed methods, including surveys administered to head teachers, ECE teachers, and parents across 386 schools, and focus…

As school choice expands across the U.S., more states are providing funds to private schools, giving parents options for their children's education. This growth in private schools has heightened the need for accountability in ensuring educational quality and student performance. Transformational Leadership Theory and Systems Theory was utilized in…

One of the enduring problems in the education system is the gap between theory and practice, where the research to improve teaching and learning is not fully realised in the classroom. This has impacted the effectiveness of education reform. We take a systems thinking approach to better understand the complexity of an education system, which…

Pressing social problems and inequities call attention to the need for interventions that target root causes and change systems. A significant challenge facing system change efforts is the lack of systems-based evaluation theory and methods. To address this challenge, we conducted an instrumental case study of evaluation within an exemplary…

This paper draws on recent research in Europe and England to discuss the politics of accountability. It is suggested that, as policies in education are increasingly focused on delivering technical-managerial accountability, that is accountability understood as evidenced in international, national, institutional and individual comparative measures…

This case study explores the strategic plan of Janice Jackson, CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, along with the central office leadership team she assembled over a five-year period. In July 2015 Dr. Jackson was tapped by then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel to become Chief Education Officer (CEdO) in partnership with CEO Forrest Claypool, a veteran public…

This is the Executive Summary for the report, "Transforming Central Office Practices for Equity, Coherence, and Continuous Improvement: Chicago Public Schools under the Leadership of Dr. Janice K. Jackson." This case study explores the strategic plan of Janice Jackson, CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, along with the central office…

This study investigates the leadership practices associated with, impacts of, and challenges encountered from a "big city" Chief Executive Officer's continuous improvement approach to system-level leadership. Undertaken from Summer 2019 to early Fall 2020, this study used organizational learning and continuous improvement as tools to…

This article reports on research into headteacher performance management in England. The English school system couples organisational autonomy with close scrutiny of educational outcomes. The management of the performance of headteachers is a central aspect of such a system. The research involved a systematic literature review and the collection…

Recent decades have revealed a gap between promises and realities of accountability in education governance, as well as further afield. Despite efforts identifying and analysing cautionary tales of accountability interventions, a systematic approach to support progressive improvements for managing accountability in complex education systems is yet…