The passage of ESSA has ushered in a new era of educational governance and leadership, but questions remain regarding how well the new law will protect students' rights to an equitable education. Lance Fusarelli and Jennifer Ayscue examine key provisions of the law, provide an update of states' implementation, and speculate about whether ESSA will…

Three years after the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Patrick McGuinn reviews how the U.S. Department of Education has managed the approval process for state accountability plans, how state plans are shaping up as a result of their newfound flexibility, and what implementation challenges have emerged. States have required…

Under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), federal education mandates will be decreasing, which means states will have more flexibility and authority than they've had in decades. State education agency (SEA) leaders are confronting great change and great opportunity as many agencies move away from a focus on compliance with federal regulations,…

The authors quantify and unpack the prevalence and effects of bullying on children and adolescents before prescribing provisos for schools to consider when planning preventive and responsive approaches to bullying.

People dislike the Common Core for several different reasons, and so it is important to disaggregate the sources of opposition and to assess and then to dispel some of the myths that have built up around it. It also is important to understand the unusual political alliances that have emerged in opposition to Common Core implementation and how they…

Like most other reform endeavors, the current restructuring movement may fail. Advocates often oversimplify restructuring, overlooking serious underlying issues, such as the politics of organizational change, and ingrained U.S. schooling characteristics, including inclusiveness, deep structure, knowledge industry influences, growth of state power,…

After four years of implementation, the National Center for Education Statistics found that schools employing zero-tolerance policies are still less safe than those without such policies. Indiscriminate use of force is the hallmark of authoritarianism. Programmatic prevention, screening and early identification, and effective discipline policies…

Describes how a typical high school in Huntington Beach, California, curbed disruptive student behavior by personalizing the school experience for "problem" students. Through mostly volunteer efforts, an adopt-a-kid program was initiated that matched kids' learning styles to adults' personality styles and resulted in fewer suspensions…

Policymakers are placing tremendous faith in assessment, a technology with many limitations. Assessment-driven improvement policy uses mandatory testing to leverage desired change, but it narrows the curriculum, punishes teachers for things beyond their control, expands bureaucracy, and does not work. Alternative strategies for school leaders are…

Implementation is actually a complex and continuous process of policy evolution. Thus, the implementation of a policy idea will vary because not all the policy's many potentialities will be recognized and because any given idea will be interpreted differently in different settings. (Author/IRT)

Summarizes the findings of several studies and evaluations of South Carolina's Educational Improvement Act. Generally, South Carolina educators claim that the reform movement has created excessive demands on their time, while the benefits of many prescriptive requirements are unclear. Several questions are raised about reform intent versus…

A Minnesota study showed that changing school starting times to accommodate adolescent sleep patterns profoundly affected many families. Implementation processes substantially influenced how families received changes. Policy makers should inform and involve all stakeholders, allow ample time, provide research-based justifications, support…

When Canada signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990, all government levels became responsible for adopting and implementing a set of entitlements considered too radical for Americans. Critics claim the Convention subverts absolute parental and institutional authority over children. Implementation problems and progress are…

Firm evidence shows that formative assessment is an essential ingredient of classroom work and that its development can raise achievement standards. Achieving this goal demands a four-point scheme for teacher development: learning from development, a slow, yet steady dissemination process, reduction of obstacles, and substantive research efforts.…