The author reveals in this article that her action research journey in the land of evidence-based practice was not her own idea. She writes that she was lured by the profession's finest scholars who advocated for reflective dispositions for practitioners to improve their practice and demonstrate the school librarian's critical role in teaching and…

Systems of accountability are "second order" ways of using evidence of the standard to which "first order" tasks are carried out for a great variety of purposes. However, more accountability is not always better, and processes of holding to account can impose high costs without securing substantial benefits. At their worst,…

Foundations across the country engage in grantmaking to eliminate the opportunity and achievement gaps in K-12 public schools. Many of the strategies and investments that funders have supported in recent years focus not only on "more time" but also on "better use of time" in schools. This better use of time centers on outcomes…

In April 2011, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) hosted a Forum, Emphasizing Evidence-Based Programs for Children and Youth, to convene the nation's leading practitioners and researchers with experience using and evaluating an array of evidence-based…

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,…

This article describes Getting to Outcomes (GTO), a 10-step framework for accountability designed to facilitate effective implementation of evidence-based programs and improvement of home-grown practices (Getting to Outcomes and GTO are trademarks registered by the University of South Carolina and RAND; Wandersman, Imm, Chinman, & Kaftarian,…

How are administrators leveraging the expertise and passion in their buildings? How do they inspire enthusiasm in their teachers and improve student achievement? How do they act as an agent for change? Those are the tasks the authors are given as instructional coaches. In the beginning, they were unsure how to tackle those tasks--or even if it was…

Teachers in the Federal Way (Wash.) Public Schools had no shortage of student data. Standardized test scores, unit tests, and report card grades were as familiar to educators as reading, writing, and arithmetic. With the onset of statewide testing in the 1990s, data analysis was expanded to cover a multitude of state learning goals in grades 4, 7,…

The National Literacy Trust's Young Readers Programme has always worked successfully with schools and libraries in areas of deprivation for over 15 years. The Trust staff have recently started some pilot work with looked-after children both in residential and foster care. As part of this work they undertook some desk-based research to assess the…

Both districts and individual schools have a very clear set of goals and skills for their students to achieve and master. In fact, except in rare cases, districts and schools develop very detailed goals they wish to pursue. In most cases, unfortunately, only the teachers and staff at a particular school or district-level office are aware of the…

Eight school districts in Rhode Island formed the East Bay Professional Learning Community to launch a joint effort to develop a culture of assessment literacy through ongoing professional learning focused on team-specific action plans tightly aligned to school, district, and state initiatives. To accomplish this, the districts pooled their…

Every district wants its schools to shine, and more are recognizing that, in order to raise performance, they need well-trained principals who can shake up the status quo and create an environment where all students flourish. Indeed, in a six-year study analyzing data from 180 schools in nine states, researchers from the Universities of Minnesota…

This brief by the Literacy Coaching Clearinghouse is about reaching for the stars--stories of vision and commitment from educators in small and large schools. Everyone knows of people who are held up as "visionaries" throughout history: Leonardo Da Vinci, Mahatma Gandhi, Jules Verne, Thomas Edison, Susan Anthony, or John Dewey, to name a few. The…

Drawing on data collected during an evaluation of Indiana schools receiving Title I 1003(g) School Improvement Fund grants in the 2008-2009 school year, this article explores how professional development can be used to support school improvement efforts. This article upholds the conclusion that when activities support the development of a…

Everyone--board members, parents, and staff--loves small schools, bur it's no secret that small schools cost more to operate, particularly if administrative and teaching staff cannot be assigned efficiently. If there is a silver lining in this dark contextual cloud, it's that political support for consolidating schools has rarely been better. The…