Differentiating state services to support district and school improvement makes sense for two reasons: (1) support is most effective when targeted to the specific needs of the district or school, based on both performance data and diagnostic data about prevailing operational and professional practice; and (2) state resources of time and money are…

In spite of tough financial times, resourceful school leaders devise ways to overcome challenges and improve education. To do this, they make strategic use of the resources they have. And they also cultivate learning communities. In this article, Elizabeth A. City describes how school leaders can make more strategic use of three essential…

What does performance improvement look like in practice in today's organizations? As part of its commitment to the learning profession, the American Society for Training and Development annually judges the practices of organizations through a blind peer review process to determine what merits the best practice designation. This article contains…

During the past several years, school systems have implemented a variety of organizational improvement initiatives, such as Six Sigma, Balanced Scorecards, Baldrige Criteria, activity-based costing, and managing for results. Unfortunately, evidence of sustained success is fleeting as school districts remain trapped in a time warp of command,…

Information technology can be a game changer in higher education, as it has been in other sectors. Information technology has brought about much of the economic growth of the past century, accelerating globalization and fostering democracy. This chapter explores many ways that information technology can be a game changer. Some are as simple as…

The fishbone diagram developed by Mariano Bernardez (2009a, 2009b) in the introductory article to this issue of "Performance Improvement Quarterly" depicts the origins and interrelationships of the models and approaches of many fields and researchers that have contributed to human performance technology (HPT) as it is used today. We can…

The International Society for Performance Improvement has always been divided by two often-conflicting views of what its purpose or mission really is. Is it primarily technology focused (focusing on the development and promotion of the field) or member focused (focusing on members' interests and their professional development)? This difference in…

Every individual should be entrusted with an internal driver to strive their best towards achieving their potential and to manifest their performance through innovative means. This can be reached only under circumstances where the abstract human values and principles are recognized and indoctrinated in the culture. The strategies discussed in this…

As resources shrink, the need to do more with less becomes critical. As a business CEO turned superintendent, this author has seen firsthand that many options exist, but none are fun, easy, or politically rewarding. He contends that the challenge of managing declining resources is not the choice between doing less for children or discovering new…

How can organizations avoid the negative, sometimes chaotic, effects of multiple, poorly coordinated performance improvement interventions? How can we avoid punishing our external clients or staff with the side effects of solutions that might benefit our bottom line or internal efficiency at the expense of the value received or perceived by…

Action plans have been shown to improve transfer of learning and have proven an effective tool in training evaluation. This study describes how action planning was simply and successfully adapted to a preexisting curriculum with few additional resources. The decision to use participant action planning, the administration of it, and the…

Paulo Freire argued that learning should be conversational, accessible, and centered on the experience of the participants. Freirean theory remains strong in adult education and has implications for human performance technology applications in such areas as online learning in terms of design, accessibility, and content, as well as performance…

School principals are second only to teachers among school-based factors that influence student achievement and they are critical to attracting and retaining effective teachers and other school staff. Yet in the past, federal policymakers haven't given school leadership much attention. This reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education…

Georgia Leadership Institute for School Improvement (GLISI) used ISPI's 10 Standards of Performance Technology to share the design, development, and implementation of an intervention striving to help Georgia districts and schools share their success stories in a clear and concise format. This intervention took the form of a PowerPoint…

Geary Rummler developed a powerful methodology to design organizations that sustainably deliver desired performance. And he was always interested in further developing his ideas. This article uses a specific project to illustrate how Rummler's work can be used to create a complete organization and explores where future methodological developments…