The Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) requested assistance from the Region 8 Comprehensive Center (Region 8 CC) to co-facilitate and design a Stakeholder Review Committee. This request is a component of the Indiana (IN) Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) and Social Emotional Learning Initiative (2020-R8-I-002 IN-02-Year2). The purpose of…

Out-of-school time (OST) programs can play an important role in fostering the development of literacy skills among children and youth. To investigate the variety of literacy skill-building strategies OST programs use, researchers from the National Institute on Out-of-School Time (NIOST) examined the practices of 31 programs in Massachusetts. This…

This paper relates how leaders of a higher education program, the Wisconsin Collaborative Education Research Network, sparked and managed innovation across communities of scholarship, research, and practice. This paper uses a "design narrative" method to describe how leaders orchestrated organizational change by bringing diverse…

The Multistate Longitudinal Data Exchange (MLDE) facilitates data sharing between states from K-12 education, higher education, and labor agencies. Its goal is to provide practitioners, policymakers, and researchers with a comprehensive data source to understand educational and career trajectories, including how these trajectories can cross state…

Schools can work toward achieving safe, positive environments by integrating a behavioral support framework for students with a systematic approach to identifying students in need of mental health services. This study of the U.S. Department of Education's School Climate Transformation Grant (SCTG) program examined how participating states and…

The Now is the Time initiative, introduced following the school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012, includes among its goals making schools safer and increasing access to mental health services. To address these aims, the U.S. Department of Education launched its School Climate Transformation Grant (SCTG) program, which aims to promote more…

This white paper presents a selection of model schools who all have, to some degree, fostered deeper learning. Schools were selected by internet search, or through references in "deeper learning" reports and documents. It should be noted that information in these reviews is based on information from school web-sites, in some cases the…

The U.S. Department of Education (ED) funds and administers education programs for a variety of purposes and recognizes and rewards excellence and improvement by students, schools, and communities. As publicly funded schools, charter schools are eligible to apply for federal formula grants as well as discretionary grants administered by various ED…

High-quality afterschool and summer programming serve an important role in Nebraska communities. They engage students emotionally, intellectually, and socially (National Research Council, 2015). They provide safe and caring supervision for children who might otherwise be unsupervised outside of school hours, they also discourage negative…

"Transforming Science Assessment: Systems for Innovation," is a series of resources designed to provide state education leaders with: (1) Information about how states are currently pursuing statewide assessment systems in science; (2) Analyses of what features influence different approaches, with an eye to supporting state leaders as…

This pilot project study explored the relationship between the newly created Educator Evaluation System by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education in Missouri and a change in the professional performance of teachers and leaders. In particular, it addressed whether the process articulated in the state's new model resulted in a positive…

"Transforming Science Assessment: Systems for Innovation," is a series of resources designed to provide state education leaders with: (1) Information about how states are currently pursuing statewide assessment systems in science; (2) Analyses of what features influence different approaches, with an eye to supporting state leaders as…

"Transforming Science Assessment: Systems for Innovation," is a series of resources designed to provide state education leaders with: (1) Information about how states are currently pursuing statewide assessment systems in science; (2) Analyses of what features influence different approaches, with an eye to supporting state leaders as…

In September of 2007, the Michigan Department of Education introduced a program referred to as seat time waivers to a few school districts in Michigan to pilot. During the 2009-2010 school year, 999 students were on seat time waivers with a total of 5070 classes taken by these students. While the number of online learners continues to grow…

What does it take to transform a large, bureaucratic institution with a fractured culture and a compliance orientation into a nurturing, collaborative, vision-directed organization? This report and the accompanying research brief endeavor to answer that question by examining a humanistic and systems thinking approach to cultural change that took…