Busy educators are often faced with a dilemma--staying up to date with evidence-based practices and initiatives that support their professional growth while combating a constant barrage of superficial ideas from other contexts. Continuous improvement approaches to change offer methods for testing new ideas and adapting them to local contexts. If…

This article provides an overview of single-case research design and how it can be used in concert with Improvement Science. Hypothetical examples of using single-case design to inform improvement efforts are provided, as is a discussion of connections between this methodology and Improvement Science. Resources for further study are also provided.

Mathematics teachers, mathematics department heads, curriculum leaders, and administrators from 11 schools in four school boards from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, participated in a project to improve the teaching and learning in grade 9 mathematics classrooms. In each of these schools, an implementation team was created, so that at least three…

How can history teachers structure learning pathways through historical content in ways that engage and challenge all pupils, that enable them to work at an appropriate pace and that also encourage pupils to self-assess and monitor their own progress? Stainer reports and reflects on classroom experiments in "Mastery Learning" that aimed…

The arrival of underprepared freshmen to a high school presents a host of challenges for all stakeholders. West High School in Bakersfield, California, responded to a problem of academic failure of a significant number of freshmen by developing and implementing a Freshman Academy for underprepared students entering the 9th grade. During two years…

In the first decade of the 21st century, the New York City (NYC) Department of Education implemented a set of large-scale and much debated high school reforms, which included closing large, low-performing schools, opening new small schools, and extending high school choice to students throughout the district. The school closure process was the…

The current emphasis of many mathematics education reform documents is on the need to change the environment of mathematics classrooms from the transmission of knowledge by the teacher to the transaction of knowledge between the teacher and the students which promotes mathematical investigation and exploration. In this article, we discuss the…

While attending an August in service, the author thoughtfully listened to a consultant's rationale for a multi-year process to standardize the county's 9th grade English classes. After reminding the group of the literacy crisis, the consultant assured them that standardization would solve at least two problems of equity. First students in the same…

Transition to a new school for adolescent students can be challenging. Students who have difficulty navigating the transition to ninth grade are at an increased disadvantage academically and personally. Even students who approach the move with excitement often have unrealistic expectations of what is necessary for success. Overall, those who do…

Case studies of two high schools that have been turned around from failing to successful show different ways in which failing high schools can be made to succeed. Both high schools concentrated on first helping incoming freshman, and both reforms were driven by data. They differed in staffing and the focus of their first year of reform.

Schools and districts across the country are being subjected to some of the fiercest budget cuts in recent history, even as principals are held increasingly accountable for significantly improving student achievement, particularly in schools labeled "persistently low-achieving." For the 5,000 lowest-performing schools, there is the…

The statistic of choice to prove that U.S. schools are failing has changed over time. First, it was test scores that meant they could not keep up with Japan. More recently it has become graduation rate. Often accompanying the graduation rate in the failure litany is the drop-out rate. NCLB puts additional pressure on dropout counts because it…

In the Scaffolded Apprenticeship Model (SAM), a school improvement strategy in place in New York City; Boston, Massachusetts; and Oakland, California, teacher teams improve their schools by studying and closing high-leverage learning gaps for small groups of struggling students as a strategy for systemic change. SAM's goal is for each school to…

In this article, the author discusses how a Vermont school improved their performance via four-quadrant intelligence. Teachers use this four-quadrant model that consists of sensing-thinking (mastery of information), sensing-feeling (personal involvement), intuitive-thinking (understanding concepts) and intuitive-feeling (creating something to…

In this article, the author, a health and physical education teacher at the Red Bank High School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, describes the process of a school "makeover." Having been informed by the school principal that the plan was to develop a career academy and have it in place for the next school year, the author was assigned a new…