In response to the global pressure that has led to an increased emphasis on international comparisons of student achievement since the 1980s, multiple federal reforms aimed at producing greater consistency in curricula have been initiated in the United States. The purpose of this study was to examine the feasibility of a national curriculum and…

In 2012, the United States Department of Education announced the Race to the Top-District grants. One joint award was made to two large educational cooperatives in the same state that together represented 111 mostly rural schools in 22 districts. One of the grant's identified four essential projects was the implementation of personalized learning.…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) changed federal teacher policy in a number of important ways. This article uses No Child Left Behind (NCLB), Race to the Top, NCLB waivers, and ESSA to detail these shifts. Since ESSA is in the early phase of implementation, we analyze the policy through the lens of previous empirical work as a way of…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) began to take form when dozens of educators from across the country were led by governors and chief state school officers in gathering and reviewing the academic standards of states that had the best outcomes. Their goal was to determine what the current best academic standards were in the country and then…

Research across the decades has confirmed that effective school leadership is associated with better outcomes for students and schools. A high-quality school leader affects dozens of teachers and hundreds or thousands of students. It is a pivotal role. From 2011 to 2016, The Wallace Foundation, through its Principal Pipeline Initiative (PPI),…

This article focuses on contemporary federal education policy as it manifests in rural schools. Rural schools differ appreciably from nonrural schools in terms of organizational systems, structures, and culture. Federal policies that drive school improvement initiatives (e.g., those regulating the functioning of schools and those managing the…

Improving low-achieving schools is a critical challenge facing urban education. Recent national policy shifts have pressed states to take an expanded role in school improvement efforts. In 2009, a federal grant competition called Race to the Top (RttT) compelled states to improve their capacity to implement ambitious education reform agendas.…

In 2011, President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan provided states with an opportunity for flexibility from certain requirements under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or ESEA, currently known as the No Child Left Behind, or NCLB, Act. A total of 43 states; Washington, D.C.; Puerto Rico; and eight districts in…

Over the last two decades, there has been interest in developing federal policies that focus on student outcomes in elementary and secondary education. Perhaps most prominently, the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB; P.L. 107-110), which amended and reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), marked a…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English Language Arts (ELA), designed to make students college and career ready, were released in June 2010, and have since been adopted by 45 states seeking to be eligible for Race to the Top funds offered by the US Department of Education. The states that signed on with the CCSS agreed to fully…

As part of the "American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009," the U.S. Department of Education sponsored the "Race to the Top" competition to encourage education reforms anchored in improving teacher effectiveness as a driver for improving student-achievement outcomes and closing achievement gaps. The New York State…

The purpose of this study was to examine and compare key elements of the actions that states in the USA and Australia took to implement the Common Core State Standards or Phase One of the Australian Curriculum, and what processes and products they used to facilitate implementation of these innovations. A rubric adapted from a diagnostic tool,…

By 2012, all of the states in this study had started implementing new or revised teacher and leader evaluation systems. There are many and varying updates to these systems, and some of them have been made to meet conditions for a state's federal "Race to the Top" (RTT) grant. Other updates have been made to meet conditions for a state's…

The "Race to the Top" competitive grant program initiated a wave of teacher evaluation reform, which scholars and policymakers have long identified as critical to improving teacher quality and student performance. State boards of education (SBEs) and state education agencies (SEAs) took different approaches to these reforms, and as a…

By 2012, all of the states in this study had started implementing new or revised teacher and leader evaluation systems. The systems include many and varying updates. In some cases, the updates were designed to meet conditions for a state's "Race to the Top" grant. In others, the updates were made to meet conditions for a state's waiver…