Promoting equity and improvement science have seen increased attention over the last several years as educators seek to expand the experiences, opportunities, and outcomes for marginalized students. This book shows school and district leaders how to create the conditions needed to use improvement science--with its robust collection of tools,…

Principals are responsible for planning school improvement efforts at the school level to leverage increases in student achievement. Recent research underscores how principals engage in satisficing behaviors that result in low-quality school improvement plans (SIPs). To disrupt compliance-based planning practices and produce high-quality SIPs,…

Based on an in-depth longitudinal study of two districts endeavoring to create continuity between preschool and elementary school we offer a framework for ensuring the long-term benefits of investment in preschool and improving student learning in the early grades.

In June 2024, His Majesty's Chief Inspector of Education announced a national thematic inspection of local authorities in Scotland. The focus of this thematic inspection was how local authorities support schools to improve. This inspection provides a timely opportunity to reflect on strengths, challenges, and opportunities for ensuring…

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…

We examine how the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic and the murder of George Floyd influenced how a mid-sized urban school district in the northeastern U.S. pursued organizational improvement for educational equity. We frame the global pandemic and the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd as organizational shocks that disrupted school and…

School leadership and school development are tightly connected and significant to improve students' learning. The latter requires leaders with knowledge about leading change and school development, and in such, coaching can contribute to enhance leadership capacity. This study focuses on school leadership groups taking part in an action research…

From a new institutional theoretical perspective, this article explores school actors' sense-making linked to data-based decision making (DBDM) policy in general and processes of data analysis in particular. The study revealed how actors' interpretation of and response to DBDM pointed to strong and weak couplings between and within the local…

This qualitative study explored the development, implementation, and measurement of a district-wide equity initiative in a suburban Chicago school district. The study used a qualitative research design and the researcher as the primary instrument for data collection. The research questions used in the study were designed to document the…

The U.S. public educational system is antiquated yet designed for the achievement results we see today. All students deserve educators willing to look within, ask difficult questions, have courageous conversations, be vulnerable, and address why schools are continually underperforming. There are researchers and educators determined to do just that…

Purpose: The paper aims to examine how a professional development school-district (PDS-D) partnership, enacting an improvement science stance, collectively explored social-emotional learning (SEL) during collaboratively designed professional learning experiences. Design/methodology/approach: This qualitative study, guided by an improvement science…

This paper presents an examination of identity "in" and "as" practice as it relates to a group of educational practitioners known as middle leaders. Drawing on the theory of practice architectures as a site-ontological approach for conceptualising educational leading, the paper considers an individual's identity as being…

The school master schedule is a structure that, when intentionally designed, can promote student access to opportunities. However, complex factors often promote the schedule as a technical process instead of one that is vital to school improvement and equity work. As student needs change, fostering leadership capacity in understanding the…

Purpose: Increasingly, school systems are forming improvement networks and using continuous improvement (CI) to realize more ambitious and equitable instruction. Yet networks reside in environments that place formidable demands on school leaders and house multiple, and sometimes contradictory, beliefs about educational goals and practices.…

Despite the number of students and the growing diversity of the students served by rural districts, a lack of research exists on rural district systems to support the continuous improvement of schools. The lack of understanding around systems for rural district improvement stands to exacerbate long-standing inequities for rural communities. Using…