Our education systems must provide access to quality and equitable educational opportunities so all students can reach their full potential. Increasingly urgent issues, such as environmental threats, economic crises, and the recent global pandemic, have highlighted the need for education systems to be flexible and resilient in times of stress to…

Based on a belief that providing all students with the best opportunities for academic success requires a constant focus on improvement, the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction (NDDPI), in partnership with the Region 11 Comprehensive Center, released the latest version of its School Renewal Guide for North Dakota Public Schools. Using…

In May 2023, the Civil Rights Division (the Division) of the U.S. Department of Justice and the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Education jointly released this Resource on Confronting Racial Discrimination in Student Discipline. The Resource demonstrates the departments' ongoing commitment to the vigorous enforcement of…

In this brief, we discuss embedding and framing the evolving literatures related to improvement and implementation sciences into a general intervention perspective. From that perspective, we sketch out some basic considerations related to improvement and implementation research, practice, and policy.

Jal Mehta is a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His work focuses on educational practices and policies that promote deep and meaningful learning. He has also conducted extensive research on the education workforce. He is the author of "In Search of Deeper Learning: The Quest to Remake the American High School"…

In this article, Frederick Hess discusses a concept he calls "greenfield schooling." The premise is simple: Profound educational improvement requires more than fine-tuning systems that have evolved over two centuries; it requires policymakers and educational leaders to revisit organizing assumptions about the grammar of schooling. In…

This practice report outlines the application of culture change methodology to co-design a whole-of-university health and wellbeing strategy. We outline considerations that necessitate a change in the way higher education contributes to student and staff mental health and wellbeing. We provide an overview of an Appreciative Inquiry culture change…

Adaptive leadership theory places a strong emphasis on overcoming challenges to achieve success in an organization. For school leaders, this means helping stakeholders navigate new and challenging situations that occur in the context of school improvement efforts. School leaders who strive to adopt an adaptive approach should consider the…

Leadership at the school level is vital for creating a positive learning environment, guiding transformative practices, and fostering collaboration among staff, students, and the community to achieve success and overall school improvement.

In this article, we present a revised version of the active learning classroom observation tool (ALCOT), designed in 2015, to support instructor reflection on instructional approaches applied within active learning classrooms. The design of active learning classrooms and teaching approaches within them have changed significantly since the initial…

"Through redesign you have the opportunity do whatever you choose to do to make your school reflect the needs and desires of your community. I believe our public-school teachers can do the great things we keep hearing private and charter schools do if we would just let them." Randy Watson, Kansas Deputy Commissioner of Education, said…

In professional learning, just as in architecture, form follows function. Although professional learning designs are vitally important, they cannot be where we begin in our planning. Purpose -- our why -- must be our starting point in designing any professional learning experience. Educators who begin by attending to the questions, "What do…

School systems are increasingly working to foster more ambitious learning environments and disrupt institutionalized educational inequities. But such efforts are complicated by a number of uncertainties--about the aims of schooling and how they might be achieved or measured--that suffuse educational organizations. Although there is general…

This article explores the work of "Rethinking Schools" (RS). RS is at one and the same time a grassroots movement of teacher-activists, a quarterly journal, and a publishing house. For almost four decades the movement has sought to enact Freirean-inspired curricular/pedagogical initiatives within US public schooling. What makes the work…

This brief comes out of a 4-year partnership between Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) and California Education Partners (Ed Partners) aimed at improving school district outcomes. Ed Partners' efforts focus on two key areas: prekindergarten and transitional kindergarten through third grade coherence and increasing the number of…