The "David" is Fern Creek Elementary, a small urban school in Orlando, Florida, that serves an overwhelmingly disadvantaged student population. The "Goliaths" are the mountains of problems that many inner-city students face--poverty, homelessness, mobility, instability, limited parent involvement, and violent neighborhood…

John Muir Elementary School in San Francisco is like countless other schools in cities across the United States. The student body comprises mostly lower income, African American and Latino students who--despite being just as intelligent as their white and Asian counterparts--traditionally underachieve on many academic measures. Talented,…

What does it take to change a school's mathematics achievement profile from low to one that is proficient and advanced? Is this transformed achievement profile sustainable? Such is the story presented here, in this three-phase case study of a K-8 urban charter school's mathematics program. The first phase discusses the school's…

To assist system administrators as they pursue their own teacher leadership initiatives, this profile from Leading Educators and the Aspen Institute details the steps Denver Public Schools (DPS) took to design and implement its Differentiated Roles pilot. Specifically, it examines the initiative's opportunities and challenges within the context of…

This brief summarizes efforts to reform developmental education at Zane State College and the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC). Focused on accelerating student success and progress, the two schools pursued distinctive approaches to reform that aligned with their institutional missions and student populations. Recognizing that the…

Imagine being part of a school district where children choose to come in early from recess to do schoolwork, a place where student engagement is so contagious it has overtaken the faculty and staff, a district where the focus is truly on every child every day. Many would contend such an ideal culture simply does not or cannot exist in today's…

With the retirement of baby boomers (born 1946-1964) looming, considerable discussion and research has been conducted into succession planning and the educational impact from the loss of these leadership skills and experiences in community colleges. To prepare for this eventuality, many community colleges have begun Grow-Your-Own (GYO) leadership…

Five years ago, Hewetson Elementary School was rated one of the lowest performing schools in Nevada. Yet despite its many challenges, Hewetson was named an Exemplary Turn Around School for the 2009-2010 school year, the highest academic designation for Nevada schools. This success is the result of transforming the school from a low-achieving…

Instead of focusing on how principals should be trained, an contrarian view is offered, grounded upon theoretical perspectives of experiential learning, and in particular, upon the theory of andragogy. A brief parable of the DoNoHarm School of Medicine is used as a descriptive analog for many principal preparation programs in America. The…

Two recent studies by Biancarosa et al. and by Saunders et al. have finally demonstrated that "job-embedded, sustained professional development" can significantly improve student achievement. But there's a catch. In both studies, effective professional development (PD) strategies were successful only under certain circumstances or only in some…

For the past decade, MDRC has evaluated a number of interventions designed to improve the outcomes of community college students, including enhanced counseling, learning communities, and financial incentives. Encouragingly, many of these strategies have produced positive effects, affirming that changes in institutional practices and policies can…

One of the key points of agreement among educators is that highly successful schools must disseminate best practices so that all can benefit. Eastern Technical High School, part of Baltimore County (MD) Public Schools, is a career and technical education (CTE) high school where students gain the knowledge and skills they need to pursue a career in…

The purpose for this study was to use the "KSH analytic framework" as a tool to provide insight into the organizational change process that, when considered, might result in lasting and significant school change. In this qualitative multi-case study of two urban comprehensive high schools, the researcher not only described the initiation and…

This is the first in a series of articles which will examine the results of a qualitative, longitudinal study of school improvement initiatives from the perspective of school stakeholders. The article captures the responses of students from a low socio-economic status school in NSW, Australia to a school initiative that restructured the learning…

At the beginning of the 2011-2012 school year, the Alaska State School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (ASSDHH) was informed that they had met Alaska's Annual Yearly Progress as required by No Child Left Behind (NCLB) for the first time ever. This was incredibly exciting and worth celebrating since teachers had invested so much "blood,…