Given the proportion of young children experiencing disadvantages in achieving optimal health due to inequities related to race, place, and income, there is increasing attention to developing effective early childhood (EC) systems. As EC leaders embrace methods such as collective impact in driving systems change, there is a growing recognition…

The Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 provided states with increased flexibility to design school accountability systems. A core element of the law is the requirement that states develop statewide systems allowing for meaningful differentiation among schools, and use this information to identify schools that should be the focus of improvement…

As U.S. school leaders anticipate the end of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds and contemplate possible budget shortfalls, they will have to make hard choices about how best to leverage limited resources to improve student outcomes. With the stakes high, lawmakers and experts urge school system leaders to rely on research and…

Short comparative interrupted times series (CITS) designs are increasingly being used in education research to assess the effectiveness of school-level interventions. These designs can be implemented relatively inexpensively, often drawing on publicly available data on aggregate school performance. However, the validity of this approach hinges on…

Innovative education is a higher training requirement for education in the period of social transformation. It needs the education to cultivate talents with innovative consciousness and ability for the development of society. High school is critical for facilitating students' innovative consciousness, innovative thinking, and innovative ability…

Underserved schools often have fewer resources and less capacity to rigorously implement improvement strategies. As a result, the districts and schools that most need support programs are often least likely to adopt and implement them successfully--a phenomenon that we call the "needs paradox." To address the needs paradox, we created…

The passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) marked the beginning of a new development cycle for accountability systems. State leaders once again have an opportunity to redesign their accountability systems based on the provisions included in ESSA and to ensure that systems improve outcomes for all students. The correct identification of…

At the beginning of the 2016 academic year 77,214 freshman students at 44 campuses began the fall semester participating in the Re-Imagining the First Year (RFY) initiative of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU). These 44 institutions have formed a learning community that reviews and shares evidence-based practices,…

Some early childhood experts assert that the effects of preschool may diminish if curricula and instructional strategies from preschool through grade 3 are not well aligned. A second explanation for why initial benefits of preschool may not persist is that children who make early gains in preschool may not have the opportunity to maintain their…

The article outlines a programme theory for the Swedish school inspection. The theory has a format of 'if … then … because', whereby the last term states one or more generative mechanisms behind the reactions to inspection, and the former terms imply what the inspectorate does and which reactions it receives. The assumptions of the theory are…

In light of an international policy movement to increase focus on students' academic achievement, the question of how to improve schools has become an important issue at all levels in the school system. Substantial resources have been invested in reforms to improve conditions for pupils' learning. Great expectations and responsibility are often…

Discussions about improving public education often focus on outcomes without considering how schools and districts can accomplish those outcomes. Research shows that using a continuous improvement process has proven successful in healthcare, manufacturing, and technology, and may hold potential for use in education as well. This brief defines and…

KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) is a national network of public charter schools whose stated mission is to help underserved students enroll in and graduate from college. Prior studies (see Tuttle et al. 2013) have consistently found that attending a KIPP middle school positively affects student achievement, but few have addressed longer-term…

KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) is a national network of public charter schools whose stated mission is to help underserved students enroll in and graduate from college. Prior studies (see Tuttle et al. 2013) have consistently found that attending a KIPP middle school positively affects student achievement, but few have addressed longer-term…

The origins of institutional effectiveness are traced, its evolution within community colleges is described, the use of the term "institutional effectiveness" is analyzed, and a practical, operational definition of the term is presented. The author hopes that this definition and the discussion in this article prove useful to community college…