Over the past decade, school districts and states have made impressive advances in collecting and managing data used for accountability purposes. By the year 2011, all 50 states will have systems to track students from year to year. But in most states and districts, all the data generated by these systems flows only one way: up. This paper…

The Bologna Process is one of the major developments to have taken place in higher education in recent centuries. It has had an impact beyond European borders and repercussions in other parts of the world. Ibero-America has also sat up and taken note, even though scholars agree that there would be difficulties with its direct implementation in the…

As of August 2011, 44 states and the District of Columbia had adopted the voluntary common core state standards (CCSS) in English language arts and mathematics released in June 2010 by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. The product of a state-led initiative, the standards are intended to set clear…

This case study focused on a school action plan, using a planning and implementation process that focused on improving stakeholder involvement and responsibility for student reading achievement at Eisenberg Elementary School. This study examined the impact of the school action process on the development of a new plan compared to other traditional…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate decision making in the Common Core State Standards Initiative as the change process moved from research, development and diffusion activities to adoption of the Common Core State Standards by the states. A decision-oriented evaluation model was used to describe the four stages of planning, structuring,…

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether there was a relationship between school leaders' perceptions regarding High Involvement Model variables as components of their organizations, including power, knowledge, information, leadership, instructional guidance, rewards, and resources, and the leaders' ability to successfully use the IBM…

This purpose of this report is to examine the role of after school and summer learning programs in supporting student success and to help bridge the divide between out-of-school time programs and schools by offering research-derived principles for effective expanded learning partnership efforts. Discussion points include: (1) Benefits of expanded…

Illinois Shifting Gears is a multilevel initiative that has simultaneously created bridge programs in the field and altered state policy to facilitate the creation of more programs in the future. These efforts have informed each other, giving policymakers the opportunity to interact with practitioners, troubleshoot bridge programs, and make…

Expanding schooling options for children in low performing schools is one of the major principles of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policy, representing two reform initiatives for public education school improvement that have dominated the conversations among public education policymakers, test-based accountability and school choice. Given their…

Career academies, schools within schools that concentrate on career fields, require the intentional efforts of teachers working collaboratively and sharing best practices to increase students' achievement and employability. Little is known of the perceptions of career academies' teachers, however, as they attempt to make changes in practice. The…

This document is part of a series of guides designed to help school district leaders address one of the toughest challenges in American education: dropout rates of 30 percent nationwide, 50 percent in many big cities, and 60 percent or more in the lowest-performing schools. This second guide in the series offers a detailed examination of the six…

This report uses the three-component framework to categorize and synthesize major recommendations to Congress for the ESEA (Elementary and Secondary Education Act) reauthorization and briefly analyzes them from the perspective of the third component. The analysis illuminates fundamental gaps in the prevailing recommendations. In particular, this…

This article describes and analyses changes made in the organisation of higher education studies in Germany and Norway, following the recommendations of the Bologna Declaration. In both countries, the characteristic modes of university study have been circumscribed by the tradition of Humboldtian values and ideals, albeit to a different extent. On…

Response-to-Intervention (RtI), a framework for improving academic and behavioral outcomes for all students, can be viewed as a current example of an educational change initiative. Given the difficulties that some schools may be experiencing when implementing RtI effectively, it is important to examine prior educational change conceptualizations…

This paper examines the availability and adequacy of schools' infrastructural facilities for implementation of the Universal Basic Education program in Nigeria. Adopting the "ex post facto" design, the researchers used existing school data on physical facilities, including a survey of key stakeholders in the education sector. Data…