This commentary describes the limitations of 40-minute class period times. The forty-minute system makes hash of the lives of teachers, especially in small schools, and about 80 percent of high schools have fewer than two hundred pupils. These small schools crowd their forty-minute periods with as many diverse and unrelated activities as possible,…

After the oft-repeated three Rs (reduce, reuse, recycle) comes the lesser-known but equally important fourth R: rot. In this case, rot means compost. Classrooms, schools, and school districts can use a number of methods to establish a compost program. The finished product is a valuable soil amendment that adds fertility to local farmland, school…

Qualitative data offer advantages to evaluators, including rich information about stakeholders' perspectives and experiences. However, qualitative data analysis is labor-intensive and slow, conflicting with evaluators' needs to provide punctual feedback to their clients. In this method note, we contribute to the literature on rapid evaluation and…

When it comes to project management, the IT department is typically its own worst enemy. When project requests are pushed through the budgeting process by different departments, it's up to IT to make them all work. The staff is required to be "heroic" to get the project load done. People get to work over weekends and postpone their vacations. The…

During these hard economic times, Heads of Department (HoDs) need to find cost effective ways of providing CPD for their staff. An astute department or subject leader will want to be adept at creating the right opportunities for professional learning for their staff with a minimum of expenditure. This article provides ideas on how to find cost…

Planning for policy implementation is as important as the implementation itself. A policy's intent can be subverted by the way the policy is implemented, or when unanticipated outcomes take precedence over the true intent. This article presents three cases of specific instances of unintended outcomes from policy implementation and presents a…

Drawing on the author's experience as director of a long-lived school-university partnership, this essay describes how one such organization can "do it right" and enhance the development of teacher leadership in schools. It also provides a cautionary tale about how that same organization can "do it wrong" and achieve the…

To navigate today's fiscal challenges successfully, school districts must constantly examine the long-term fiscal implications of policy, programmatic, and human resource decisions on their organization. They must look at the effect of such items as bargaining agreements, contracted services, placement costs, transportation costs, benefits,…

Evidence-based programs will be useful to the extent they produce benefits to individuals on a socially significant scale. It appears the combination of effective programs and effective implementation methods is required to assure consistent uses of programs and reliable benefits to children and families. To date, focus has been placed primarily…

As governing boards have become more sophisticated and polished in their oversight of colleges and universities, they have also become more intentional in the way they organize themselves to meet their missions. Some boards have evolved entirely new structures. Even within the parameters of fairly traditional constructs, many boards have made…

Performance funding--the linking of allocation of resources to accomplishment of certain desired outcomes--is an idea that is once again finding favor with policymakers. It has intuitive appeal; what's not to like about paying for results? While it is a notion that makes common sense to most decisionmakers, it is an idea with a very checkered…

Both publicly and privately funded research projects managed by universities are growing in size and scope. Complex, large-scale projects (over $50 million) pose new management challenges and risks for universities. This paper explores the relationship between project success and a variety of factors in large-scale university projects. First, we…

Instructional design models have been criticized for being too inflexible and taking too long to follow to be useful in today's fast-paced environment. As a result, some have rejected instructional design. This article offers an alternative view of instructional design as flexible and able to be accomplished in much shorter time periods than…

Early years professionals wrote about changes in their settings as part of their MA studies, and reflected on the use of theories of leadership in implementing these changes. This article describes a documentary analysis of the scripts produced. Initially basing the study in current knowledge of leadership and change in Early Years settings, the…

Early childhood professionals can build partnerships with families that allow them together to guide the learning and development of the children whose lives they share. In this article, the author shares a system of indicators in professional practice that might be helpful in building partnerships with families that enable the full effectiveness…