This playbook addresses the "how" in the continuous improvement process, focusing on schools and communities. It is a step-by-step guide for superintendents, principals, staff, and communities on how to engage in the school continuous improvement cycle while recognizing the unique assets and challenges of communities and their schools.…

The problem addressed in this study was that teachers struggle to apply the middle school concept in three middle schools in the U.S. region of New England. This study was a qualitative investigation of teachers' perceptions of the middle school concept and their needs for additional support to effectively apply it. The conceptual framework for…

School-improvement initiatives are implemented with admirable goals, often requiring substantial human and material resources. However, many fail to be sustainable beyond short-term funding cycles or the enthusiasm of local initiators. Typically, implementation and improvement are viewed linearly and as static end-products that fail to consider…

School improvement ultimately rests in the hands of teachers, and the balance of teaching and evaluation of learning is the method for sustained success. In his 2009 book, "Visible Learning (VL)," John Hattie acknowledges this statement and contends that the majority of teachers know what works due to reflexive teaching praxis. Many…

School improvement ultimately rests in the hands of teachers, and the balance of teaching and evaluation of learning is the method for sustained success. In his 2009 book, "Visible Learning (VL)," John Hattie acknowledges this statement and contends that the majority of teachers know what works due to reflexive teaching praxis. Many…

Purpose: School improvement planning has been a central part of school improvement initiatives for decades. Evidence suggests, however, that traditional planning processes are regularly superficial. In the USA, some principals have begun developing short-cycle planning designed to encourage school leadership teams and staff to develop, monitor and…

The National Standards and Benchmarks for Effective Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools (NSBECS) were published in 2012 to serve as both a guide and assessment tool for PK-12 Catholic school effectiveness and sustainability. The NSBECS rest on the conviction that adhering to these standards and benchmarks with fidelity will result in highly…

Designed to overcome a common barrier to successful implementation of school improvement efforts--entrenched belief systems--this book digs deeper into the power of collective efficacy. Teams with a strong sense of collective efficacy devise ways to make "what's supposed to work" actually work, and find ways to exercise control over…

This study applies a model of school organisation developed by one of the authors to investigate school improvement processes leading to a whole school approach in Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) literature. The model is operationalized to a survey instrument and distributed to Swedish upper secondary teachers. The instrument provides…

Entrepreneurship in school is a widespread issue within the school system and it is therefore important to problematise teachers and their role when entrepreneurship is emphasized in their school practice. The teachers in this study, from the secondary and upper secondary levels, were all participating in a Swedish three-year school improvement…

This article chronicles the history of community schools and identifies common features, or "pillars," that are associated with high-quality community schools. It is drawn from "Community Schools as an Effective School Improvement Strategy: A Review of the Evidence," a report that examined 143 research studies on community…

Numerous high-profile efforts have sought to "turn around" low-performing schools. Evidence on the effectiveness of school turnarounds, however, is mixed, and research offers little guidance on which models are more likely to succeed. We present a mixed-methods case study of turnaround efforts led by the Blueprint Schools Network in…

By the start of the 2017-18 school year, states must complete their plans to meet the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 (ESSA), which requires all states to rethink their school classification systems in consultation with community members. So far, 16 states and Washington, D.C., have submitted their plans to the U.S. Department of Education,…

The passage of the 2015, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), affords states funding for many new options to address the needs of learners. One of the prominent options is personalized learning (PL). This study sought to determine how states positioned PL in their state plans. This study used a qualitative research design to analyze state ESSA plans…

It is well documented that classroom observation reports are used by school leaders as just one piece of the clinical supervision process of teachers (Cohen and Goldhaber, 2016). While the frequency of classroom observations might vary between school districts, recent regulations on Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) have added more…