Does receipt of School Improvement Grants (SIG) funding to implement a school intervention model have an impact on outcomes for low-performing schools? This study answers this question using a regression discontinuity design (RDD) that exploits cutoff values on the continuous variables used to define SIG eligibility tiers, comparing outcomes in…

This book advances discussion and disseminates knowledge and global perspectives on what school leadership looks like, how it is enacted and under what circumstances, and when or where lessons might be portable. This book has wide appeal for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners considering school leadership and how to support it…

Education issues feature almost daily in print media, online, on the radio and on television, much of which focuses on the perceived deficits of students and teachers. Singled out for special attention are low socio-economic status (SES) schools which are frequently characterised by teachers and students with little investment in learning and…

In comparing one public school to another, discussions frequently include talk concerning the socio economics of a school or district, which then leads to talk about the advantages that one socioeconomic setting has over another. Educators tend to agree that low academic achievement frequently associated with a low socioeconomic status is a…

For the first time, researchers, policymakers and practitioners across the world will have access to a comprehensive mapping of research evidence and policy strategies about education and poverty in affluent countries. Although there is widespread agreement that poverty and poor educational outcomes are related, there are competing explanations as…

This study uses large-scale survey data and a multiple group, multilevel latent growth curve model to examine differential school effects between low, middle, and high social class composition public schools. The results show that the effects of school inputs and school practices on learning differ across the 3 subpopulations. Moreover, student…

This book explores the challenges of implementing and assessing educational interventions in varied classroom contexts. Included are reflections on the challenges of designing studies for improving the instructional core of schools, guidelines for establishing evidence of interventions' impacts across a wide range of settings, and an assessment of…

This paper discusses selected techniques for measuring equity in a state school finance system and focuses on the distribution of fiscal outcomes among school districts in Pennsylvania. Measures of dispersion, measures of relationship, and winners-losers ratios are demonstrated with data from a small sample of school districts. Data from a…

Advances the following premises: (1) the thinking skills of low achievers should be cultivated as much as those of high achievers; (2) low achievers can be taught higher order thinking skills; and (3) the cultivation of effective thinking skills is at least as important as mastery of basics. Presents five recommendations for change. (AF)

This report uses newly developed techniques of statistical analysis to assess the separate and joint influences of home, school, and neighborhood in Lothian (Scotland, United Kingdom) and to show that deprivation in each of these areas depresses young people's educational attainment. The results reported here come from the first phase of a…

This case study of a central office school improvement initiative in an urban school system examines instructional leadership practices of two junior high school principals. The school-based research focuses on correlates of school effectiveness in "low achieving" settings and the principals' capacity to "reflect-in-action," an ability to make…

Since 1969, Toronto's Metropolitan Separate School Board has been rewarding additional monies to "Special Needs" schools within its jurisdiction in the hope of raising educational opportunity in those schools to a more equitable level. The attempt to arrive at a fair system for determining which schools should receive such assistance led…