This brief explains how four important system design initiatives frequently promoted by state and local education agencies for school improvement can be implemented through an intentional systematic approach for a powerful, positive impact on student outcomes. As technical assistance providers with expertise in four specific frameworks for…

The education enterprise struggles to get evidence-supported practices and programs operating in schools and classrooms. Three factors are contributing to this reality: (1) a limited understanding of evidence-supported practices at the practitioner level; (2) the centralized selection of (sometimes evidence-weak) improvement strategies; and (3)…

Increasing instructional quality in higher education is a key goal of educational development (ED) work, yet demonstrating complex outcomes remains challenging and lacks practical guidance. Evaluating ED services often relies on a reductionist approach characterized by linear assumptions of causal pathways to measure the extent to which…

State aid for special education shapes local decisions about identifying students for special education, the programs and services to which students have access and in which students with disabilities are educated, and how local educators structure and administer their special education programs. The connection between state funding for special…

An increasing number of high schools have adopted Tier 1 PBIS; however, implementation of advanced tiers of PBIS in high schools is less common and specific guidance is scarce. To address this need and better understand the level of support needed to successfully implement advanced tiers of PBIS at the high school level, the National Center on…

This paper identifies the need to view strategic management and implementation with new insights from entrepreneurs and researchers who have attained and studied successful enterprises. The backdrop is the rate of disruption taking place all over the U.S. as well as globally. The objective is to understand major changes to garner ideas for more…

Educational policy borrowing has become rather common in our globalised world. However, the literature lacks contextual criteria that may be employed by researchers and policy makers to assess the correspondence of a particular policy to the local context of a borrowing system. Based on a secondary analysis of documents and research reports, this…

This paper deals with borrowing the German dual vocational training model in Kazakhstan. The aim of the paper is to identify the key issues and challenges of the transfer process. The analysis is based on the model proposed by Phillips and Ochs (2003, 2004) which outlines four stages of policy borrowing: (1) impulses, (2) decision, (3)…

The availability of effective research-based interventions and practices within schools is a growing concern within the field of education. There remains a lack of interventions that have been fully evaluated for use within schools and by school personnel, particularly in the area of social skills interventions. Understanding the need for social…

Promotion and tenure considerations are equally important steps both for the faculty and institution. For faculty, it's a matter of being able to exercise academic freedom without the fear of repercussion and potentially losing the job. For institutions, it's a matter of how to keep and nourish the best candidates and avoid making a lifetime…

Americans are increasingly divided over education policy. But education debates overlook one very important and basic fact: even good policies fail if they are poorly implemented, and it is hard to evaluate a policy's merit if it is not implemented well. That may seem obvious, but time and again policies fail because of a lack of attention to the…

The lesson study (LS) model, which originated in Japan, has become popular all over the world. This article will highlight some of the challenges encountered when the LS model was picked up and introduced in a local school context in a Norwegian municipality. The article views this process in the light of research on LS-model transfer into local…

A model is presented for coordinated community planning to address multiple service needs in two countries. Two communities, one in western Texas and one in the United Kingdom, found that despite the considerable efforts of multiple organizations, the local social, educational, and health services remained uncoordinated. Furthermore, there was no…

"Better Evidence, Better Choices, Better Schools," a recent report from the Center for American Progress and the Knowledge Alliance, focuses on the evidence-based research provisions in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). ESSA provisions ask districts and schools to consider various sources of evidence, make judgments about the…

Educational interventions typically are complex combinations of human actions, organizational supports, and instructional resources that play out differently in different contexts and with different kinds of students. The complexity and variability of outcomes undermines the notion that interventions either "work" or "don't…