This article offers insights into the challenges and complexities of accredited national professional learning programmes that are collaboratively designed, led, and delivered. The article is framed within theoretical perspectives concerning large-scale system change, highlighting the importance of inter-professional relationships and joint work…

"Unscripted Possibilities" examines the potential for change that emerges in rural environments affected by poverty and educational reforms that ignore the specific contexts of rural schools. Using a National Writing Project program, the College, Career, and Community Writers Program, as a case, we argue that professional development…

This What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) report, part of the WWC's School Leadership topic area, examines research on the effects of the National Institute for School Leadership™ (NISL) program on student, teacher, and school leader outcomes. The "NISL" program (formerly the "NISL Executive Development Program") is a professional…

Experiential learning is an effective educational tool across many academic disciplines, including career development. Nine different institutions bridged by the National Institutes of Health Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training Consortium compared their experiments in rethinking and expanding training of predoctoral graduate students and…

In 2010, the Institute of Education Sciences commissioned a much-needed national evaluation of response to intervention (RTI). The evaluators defined their task very narrowly, asking "Does the use of universal screening, including a cut-point for designating students for more intensive Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions, increase children's…

The report of the national response to intervention (RTI) evaluation study, conducted during 2011-2012, was released in November 2015. Anyone who has read the lengthy report can attest to its complexity and the design used in the study. Both these factors can influence the interpretation of the results from this evaluation. In this commentary, we…

In a two-year time span, 2013-14 through 2015-16, the National Writing Project's College, Career, and Community Writers Program (C3WP) achieved significant results in an independent, intent-to-treat, randomized controlled study. Middle and high school teachers in high-poverty rural districts in ten states changed their practices in response to the…

This article is an account of a national project established to support secondary school art teachers to re-engage with their own artistic practice. It draws extensively upon the experiences of the participants and examines the value of teachers making time for their own practical work, both personally and professionally. Beginning in January…

Meaningful and sustained assessment is best achieved when a campus unit takes a collaborative leadership role to work with other departments, offices, and groups. Simply developing and implementing assessment in isolation and for the unit itself is not enough. While the value of collaboration among diverse campus constituents is widely recognized,…

The "Marland" Report was the impetus and structure to provide a more systematic approach to building state and regional gifted programs. One of the strategies used to proliferate the spread of programming for gifted students throughout the states was the National/State Leadership Training Institute on the Gifted and Talented…

The national English program in Mexico was formally launched in 2009. The new program supplanted various state programs, and aimed to create a coherent, uniform curriculum that extended English instruction to all public school students across the country. The article describes the development, evolution, and changes as the program was piloted and…

Teach for America (TFA) is a national organization with a long-established presence in Houston. The organization recruits recent college graduates and mid-career professionals who commit to teaching for two years in schools with high proportions of economically disadvantaged students (Teach for America, 2017). Since 1991, Houston Independent…

This paper explores the factors which influence the effectiveness of formal development programmes targeted at multi-agency teams in children's services. It draws on two studies of the National College for School Leadership's Multi-Agency Teams Development programme, reporting key characteristics of the programme, short-term outcomes in terms of…

This study was a post-evaluation of graduates of Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), a national program in high schools to promote entrepreneurship knowledge and skills. The study focused on graduates of the NFTE curriculum in an inner-city high school in Los Angeles County, California. Although the NFTE curriculum contains an evaluation…

There is now a great deal of experience across different countries as they act in their own ways to improve the productivity and excellence of their higher education institutions. Each nation wants to create an international reputation for excellence that will attract students, academic staff and business. This involves change at the national…