This study examines issues encountered during a school's first year implementing science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (STEAM) curriculum. The school year began with multiple changes in leadership, including the appointment of a School Operations Manager and Teacher on Special Assignment, who took on respective roles of principal and…

Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is a widely implemented, culturally responsive framework using prevention and intervention activities to promote a safe school climate and positive academic and behavioral student outcomes. Using a qualitative single-case study design, authors provide a rich description of PBIS implementation…

How educational leaders initiate and sustain change is often hotly debated by those inside and outside of the system. Given the many reform initiatives of the past 30 years, and the resulting changes public educators have made lurching from initiative to initiative, one must ask if public education has truly improved. The answer to why public…

This study analyzes the implementation of schoolwide positive behavior interventions and supports (SWPBIS) for the staff of one middle school that implemented SWPBIS during a districtwide strike and school merger. The researchers developed a qualitative case study based on focus groups and interviews with the staff who remained at the school…

This case study followed the implementation of the co-principal leadership model in a K-8 school district for three years. A district superintendent implemented the co-principal model to (1) resolve issues around merging existing schools with well-established principals; (2) provide leadership stability and succession planning; and (3) serve as a…

A key challenge for 21st-century schools, families, and communities is to develop knowledgeable, responsible, and caring students who are able to work well with others from diverse backgrounds in socially and emotionally skilled ways. This case study tells the story of one middle school's journey through the implementation of a social and…

K-12 intervention studies often include fidelity of implementation (FOI) as a mediating variable, though most do not report the validity of fidelity measures. This article discusses the critical need for validated FOI scales. To illustrate our point, we describe the development and validation of the Implementation Validity Checklist (IVC-R), an…

An exploratory case study is presented in which social network analysis (SNA) was used to explore how school teaming structures influence the implementation of School-Wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS). The authors theorized that PBIS leadership teams that include members with connections to all other information-sharing…

This study examined factors related to the implementation of a School Wide Positive Behavioral Intervention and Support (SWPBIS) program at a large middle school in the United States. Parent Teacher Student Association volunteers at the school reported that teacher fidelity to implementation of SWPBIS activities was inconsistent, threatening the…

Exploring the current educational setting consist of persistent and high-stakes testing and accountability, leaving administrators and professional school counselors tenaciously searching for new and efficient methods to enhance students' behavior and academic performance. In an attempt to obtain growth from their students, several schools and…

This case study focuses on one district's process of continuous improvement in family engagement. The improvement effort addresses the point at which family engagement tends to decline precipitously and students are particularly vulnerable--the transition into high school. In this article we analyze the implementation of a continuous improvement…

The purpose of this two-case study was to describe the perceptions of middle school administrators and teachers concerning leader behaviors throughout the implementation of Response-to-Intervention (RTI) programs. The theory which guided this study is transformational leadership theory (Bass, 1990) as it related directly to how administrators and…

Positive behavior interventions and supports (PBIS) is an evidence-based framework for preventing and treating challenging behavior in schools and improving overall school climate. The efficacy of this positive, proactive framework has been well established across varying school settings, yet little is known about schoolwide PBIS implementation…

This case was written for educators who are involved in organizational change such as school turnaround, new instructional programs, intervention programs, and implementation of new programs. It explores how a new administrator navigates the implementation of a response to intervention (RTI) pilot program and how instructional leaders create…

At the heart of the effort to enact and scale up successful school reforms is the need for more robust links between research and practice. One promising approach is design development, a methodology widely used in other fields and only recently adapted to education, which offers a disciplined process for identifying practical problems, assessing…