The performance of South Africa's educational system in national and international tests indicates that a large proportion of its public schools are underperforming. Ineffective leadership has been put forward as one reason. This paper analyses a leadership development programme, Partners for Possibility (PfP), which seeks to strengthen leadership…

University earth science departments seeking to establish meaningful geoscience outreach programs often pursue large-scale, grant-funded programs. Although this type of outreach is highly successful, it is also extremely costly, and grant funding can be difficult to secure. Here, we present the Geoscience Education Outreach Program (GEOP), a…

This publication outlines the fundamental principles and process of Strategic School Design. Through more than a decade of research and practice in the area of school resource use, we have found that high-performing schools are responding to the changing context in education by using people, time, technology, and money in ways that look…

In recent years, schools have been forced by rising costs and shrinking budgets to stretch their resources further than ever before in order to meet the educational needs of today's students. EPA's ENERGY STAR program helps K-12 schools and districts improve energy efficiency, reduce operating costs and redirect critical resources into the…

In response to mounting concerns about the cost of college, lawmakers have proposed major new partnerships between the federal government and states to tackle college affordability. The Education Trust maintains that any new federal-state proposal aimed at making college more affordable must also simultaneously address completion problems by…

In this article, the author talks about program evaluation, a strategy commonly used by instructional leaders that can help school business officials improve their budget process. As districts struggle to develop budgets in these challenging economic times, school business officials might consider turning to program evaluation for help. Program…

Pay for performance is not a new idea, and reformers should not ignore the dismal record of merit pay over the past century. Initially adopted with a flourish of expectations during several waves of popularity in the past, every plan eventually fell into disuse. These plans proved to be unexpectedly costly and cumbersome to run. They often…

Response to Intervention (RtI) is a process that addresses both the identification of learning disabilities and the design of early intervention and instruction. RtI provides a framework upon which to structure high quality instruction for all students and a means by which to identify those in need of more intensive intervention. The process is…

In "Holding Accountability to Account: How Scholarship and Experience in Other Fields Inform Exploration of Performance Incentives in Education"--a paper presented at the National Center on Performance Incentives research to policy conference in February--Richard Rothstein, a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, argues educational…