The current U.S. education agenda places unprecedented attention on improving the quality of its roughly fifteen hundred teacher preparation programs. The effort places considerable weight on measuring program effectiveness and includes a push to hold programs accountable for their graduates' effects on student performance. Concerns regarding the…

In spite of tough financial times, resourceful school leaders devise ways to overcome challenges and improve education. To do this, they make strategic use of the resources they have. And they also cultivate learning communities. In this article, Elizabeth A. City describes how school leaders can make more strategic use of three essential…

What does performance improvement look like in practice in today's organizations? As part of its commitment to the learning profession, the American Society for Training and Development annually judges the practices of organizations through a blind peer review process to determine what merits the best practice designation. This article contains…

Effective leadership is on everyone's mind this presidential election year as the country's citizens look for a strong candidate to guide them through the next four years. Effective leadership is just as critical in the nation's school districts where people prepare their young people to be the global citizens of tomorrow. In most school…

The fishbone diagram developed by Mariano Bernardez (2009a, 2009b) in the introductory article to this issue of "Performance Improvement Quarterly" depicts the origins and interrelationships of the models and approaches of many fields and researchers that have contributed to human performance technology (HPT) as it is used today. We can…

The International Society for Performance Improvement has always been divided by two often-conflicting views of what its purpose or mission really is. Is it primarily technology focused (focusing on the development and promotion of the field) or member focused (focusing on members' interests and their professional development)? This difference in…

Over the past decade, human performance technology (HPT) has become an important source of rigor and application in support of best practices in capacity development. HPT shares common principles with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development best practices. This article explores HPT's critical role as the methodology of choice…

School principals are second only to teachers among school-based factors that influence student achievement and they are critical to attracting and retaining effective teachers and other school staff. Yet in the past, federal policymakers haven't given school leadership much attention. This reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education…

Analysis of classroom use and utilization data provides essential information for strategic space planning. However, efforts to improve use and/or utilization metrics can be thwarted by ingrained cultural practices, campus politics, lack of understanding, failure to recognize the impact to programmatic needs, absence of a coordinated campus…

Delaware Technical and Community College online courses are not properly focused to ensure instructors are effective in improving student achievement. First time online students are not given the proper tools when navigating online courses at the college. The focus at Delaware Tech should be on improving the format which students use when…

Over the past two decades, scholars and practitioners in a variety of industries have considered work redesign among a constellation of strategies to promote employee recruitment and retention, development, motivation, and performance. Although educational policymakers in the middle to late 1990s shifted their attention to standards, systemic…