In an environment of increased accountability and autonomy for school leaders, insufficient assistance relationships between school leaders and district staff hinder the ability of principals to utilize autonomy in ways that translate to improved instruction and student performance. This study sought to examine and strengthen the assistance…

District administrators who want to build capacity for data use in schools may be well-served by starting in the central office. This case study of the Boston Public Schools shows how central office administrators can leverage their own data inquiry cycles to improve the ways they support schools in using data. Using the Data Wise Improvement…

For much of the last two decades, beginning with the passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2002, the top political leaders have shown concern about children stuck in failing public schools. NCLB required districts to do something -- not enough, but something -- about those schools. Millions of children still languish in low-performing schools,…

Though scholars agree that professional development (PD) is a key mechanism for implementing education policies that call for teacher change, and that PD generally needs to be content-focused, active, collaborative, coherent, and sustained, the application of this framework has yielded mixed results. In this qualitative study, we employed…

This technical brief describes updates to a database of dropout prevention programs and policies in 2006/07 created by the Regional Education Laboratory (REL) Northeast and Islands and described in the Issues & Answers report, "Piloting a searchable database of dropout prevention programs in nine low-income urban school districts in the…

School reformers hope that converting comprehensive high schools into collections of small schools will produce results similar to those realized in freestanding small schools. Three themes--personalization, professional community, and shared decision making--exemplify the early successes in conversions. But the challenge of sustaining these gains…

Turning Points is a national design for middle school change, coordinated by the Center for Collaborative Education in Boston, Massachusetts, which serves as the National Turning Points Center. The design focuses on restructuring middle schools to improve learning, teaching, and assessment for all students. It is based on the seminal "Turning…