This article contributes to a long-standing conversation about the implementation of service-learning by proposing an updated revision for the 21st century: critically engaged civic learning (CECL). The term service-learning is problematic as it invokes inequitable power dynamics that inherently privilege one group over another, with more…

Improving performance in an environment often tested by intermingled social problems, including poverty, racial isolation, cultural clashes between teachers and students, and school funding disparities requires authentic, committed family, school, and community partnerships. Using Bryk's (2010) model for effective and improving schools, our study…

This article furthers research on the necessary components of what supports successful school turnaround, and also explores how and why two rural schools taking part in a Midwest State Turnaround School Project were successful in implementing school turnaround policy. Perceptions of building principals, district administrators, and regional…

Top-down accountability policies have arguably had very limited impact over the past 20 years. Education stakeholders are now contemplating new forms of bottom-up accountability. In 2013, policymakers in California enacted a community-based approach that creates the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) process for school finance to increase…

Educators have regarded building leader-member relationships using collaboration as a fundamental component to successfully improve students' academic achievement. Ineffective collaborative leadership practices may lead to achievement deficits particularly for many urban charter schools operated by educational management organizations. The purpose…

California recently overhauled its K-12 public education finance system. Enacted in 2013, the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) replaced California's 40-year-old funding formula. The LCFF increases district officials' fiscal flexibility; provides more resources to districts serving larger proportions of low-income, English learner (EL), and…

This article reports on the perceptions and experiences of general elementary educators as they engage in a school reform process that requires them to learn and implement an arts infused curriculum intended to raise student achievement on standardized tests in non-arts subjects. This qualitative study reveals not only how one arts-based school…

U.S. education has experienced many waves of reform in responding to rapid changes in knowledge, technologies, and the economy. It is now widely accepted that, to succeed in the future, all young people must have the opportunity to develop critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, and communication competencies--often referred to as…

This policy study critically compares two different efforts to implement an accountability system in the New York City public schools. In 1971, the New York City Board of Education contracted with the Educational Testing Service (ETS), which created a lengthy accountability plan for the district. Fitful maneuvers to execute the ETS plan fizzled…

Background: Scholars widely acknowledge that politics help explain why policies are adopted and how they play out in states, districts, and schools. To date, political analyses of education reform tend to isolate a particular policy and examine the politics of its adoption or implementation, but pay less attention to the effects of the politics of…

The Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) represents a fundamental transformation of the way California allocates state funds to school districts and the ways the state expects districts to make decisions about (and report on) the use of these funds. This is the first in a series of short briefs that aims to capture some key themes emerging from…

The New School Foundation was not born from a commission, legislative mandate, research project, think tank, or even the mind of a leading education scholar. One of Washington state's pioneering PreK-3rd initiatives began as the brainchild of a wealthy Seattle businessman, Stuart Sloan, 20 years ago. The New School Foundation and its ideas were…

Competency education, an educator-led reform, is taking root in schools and districts across the country. In some states, state leadership has cleared the path with policies to advance competency education. This paper seeks to map out the terrain of the district implementation strategies being used to convert traditional systems into personalized,…

Education is socially and economically beneficial for the country to grow large in future. Many researchers claims expenditure in education generates more productivity than expenditure in infrastructural development of the country. This instigated for move towards educational progression, especially in developing countries where majority of…

This paper documents the initial process by which a San Diego middle school, located in a low-income and predominantly Hispanic neighborhood and repeatedly failing to meet No Child Left Behind provisions, restructured into an academically rigorous, detracked charter school. The discussion of the political experience and working relationships…