School leaders often neglect a key mechanism for empowerment: The school-improvement plan. In this article, researchers Coby Meyers and Bryan VanGronigen discuss five fundamentals of improvement planning that school leaders can use to ensure their plans are useful, effective, and on-track.

School improvement research has insufficiently considered the importance of intervening in schools with declining academic performance. Fields such as engineering and medicine have prioritized predicting decline to save structures or patients before they are in peril. Unfortunately, in education, school improvement policies and interventions are…

Recent United States (U.S.) educational policies--especially the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015--have challenged state education agencies (SEAs) to take greater responsibility for and leadership over improving underperforming schools. SEA capacity to accomplish this charge varies, so many SEAs contract with third-party, external…

Some governments require that educational leaders working in underperforming schools create school improvement plans (SIPs) to guide change efforts. Extant research describes two common approaches to SIPs: (a) a "traditional" approach where leaders create a single plan for an entire academic year, and (b) a "short-cycle"…

Given that school districts have considerable discretion over the schools they lead and serve, it follows that district actions can influence school turnaround. Using data from three districts that successfully oversaw transformation efforts in their lowest performing elementary schools, this article provides evidence on how district leaders can…

Purpose: This study investigated how state education agencies (SEAs) articulated their roles and responsibilities with respect to improving underperforming schools and districts after the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015. Research Approach: Using a conceptual framework rooted in incrementalism--a theory suggesting that…

Purpose: Limited research on root cause analysis exists in educational leadership. Accurately diagnosing and detailing root causes--the why--of organizational failure, as is relatively common in other fields, could improve principals' ability to devise situationally- and contextually-responsive solutions in their improvement plans. In this study,…

This introduction to the special issue "Improving Schools by Strategically Connecting Equity Leadership and Organizational Improvement Perspectives" establishes the need for and presents an overview of the issue's empirical research accounts of how anti-racist and social justice-oriented school leaders established organizational…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) offers states increased flexibility in how they identify, rank, label, and support underperforming schools. Initial reviews of state ESSA plans, however, suggest that identification and labeling policies have remained relatively unchanged. In this study, we analyze all state ESSA plans to systematically…

Governments have injected billions of dollars into the massive school improvement industry, but little is known about the providers that offer services and whether their services actually improve schools. Bryan VanGronigen and Coby Meyers highlight their research the topic, which has found that few states monitor and evaluate provider performance…

Research suggests that high-quality school improvement planning reflective of the school's needs and objectives is central to a principal's success in leading a school. Some American scholars contend that successfully planned and executed "quick wins" are critically important to launching high-level organizational change processes…

We understand very little about what is special that leaders do to facilitate improvement that is both transformational and lasting in previously persistently failing schools in the United States. Relatively little is understood about change not just during the initial turnaround stage, but that "endures" on the larger journey as the…

In the last 20 years, the United States has spent billions of dollars on policies and programs to turn around, or rapidly improve, its lowest-performing schools. Little consideration has been given to the critical role the school district plays in launching and shaping school turnaround. This case study of one mid-sized urban district's effort to…

More than 15 years after the passage of No Child Left Behind, billions of dollars have been spent on school-turnaround policies and initiatives. Yet, this growing "school improvement industry" has received surprisingly little consideration. This study is an initial effort to begin to better understand this industry's supply side. We use…

Federal legislation requires all low-performing schools to create yearly school improvement plans (SIPs), and in many cases, school principals are responsible for conceptualizing and drafting the SIP. However, this year-long approach may not create the necessary focus and sense of urgency low-performing schools need to learn, adapt, and turn…