Successive UK governments have adopted failure as a strategy in the reform of public education in England: first, to construct crises in order to blame professionals/parents/children for a failing system; and second, to provide rescue solutions that are designed to fail in order to sustain the change imperative. We describe this as policy…

This research examines the reasons for school dropout occurring at varying education levels in the Turkish education system (TES). To this end, research on school dropouts pertaining to TES has been targeted. The systematic data analysis method was used in the research. 47 studies suitable for the purposes of the study were analyzed through…

Purpose: Educational organizations confront a number of failures along with successful practices. Although a potential learning source for organizations, failures encountered are not normally welcomed and utilized to improve future practices. However, the existing literature emphasizes that individuals and organizations can learn a lot from their…

Studies of charter closure rates typically focus on year-to-year closures. While important for researchers, such studies provide little guidance to families seeking to understand the risk of enrolling their child in a charter school. That is because studies determining how many schools close each year provide no information on how long the school…

Over the years, the nation's large urban school districts have consistently learned from the progress of their peer districts across the country. Great City School districts that have embraced the challenge of educating America's urban children have recognized the value of benchmarking their performance and growth against the progress of others.…

When a researcher tests an educational program, product, or policy in a randomized controlled trial and detects a significant effect on an outcome, the intervention is usually classified as something that "works." When expected effects are not found, there is seldom an orderly and transparent analysis of plausible reasons why.…

We discuss one of the oldest ambitions in U.S. education: that teachers should treat children as active learners, teaching should be intellectually engaging, teachers should respect students' thinking, and schools should cultivate thoughtful work. These ideas originated when Horace Mann and his allies campaigned for them. We revisit them and take…

"Still Asleep at the Wheel" continues the investigation of the U.S. Department of Education's Charter Schools Program (CSP) that began with the March 2019 report "Asleep at the Wheel: How the Federal Charter Schools Program Recklessly Takes Taxpayers and Students for a Ride" (ED612862). This report takes up where the first…

This article describes accounts of grading reform initiatives that while well-intentioned, met with staunch opposition and eventually were abandoned. The implementation strategies employed by the leaders of these reform initiative are explored, along with reasons these strategies failed to result in meaningful and enduring change. Alternative…

For the past 20 years Massachusetts has used a high-stakes, test-based accountability system for the state's public schools. The Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) are standardized tests administered in Grades 3-10 which account for the majority of district and school accountability measures, and the Grade 10 tests serve as an…

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact and interactions of student-centered instructional techniques on College Algebra student engagement, mathematics attitudes, and achievement. At my place of practice, instructional shifts towards student-centered and social-efficiency models of instruction are taking place, supported by…

These true tales of educational trauma and transformation pay homage to Pelias, R. J. (2000. The critical life. "Communication Education," 49[3], 220-228), in order to share vulnerable, personal stories of surviving standardized testing, the short bus, and the tenure track. I offer vivid, thickly described accounts of personal failures…

This article presents the results of a collective case study exploring how K12 practitioners perceive the interaction of systems thinking, creativity, and learning from failure within their professional practice. In order to identify K12 practitioners who were well-versed in systems thinking, we targeted students within an instructional design and…

Our contribution to this issue features a K12 school district + university partnership related to technology integration, and explores the connections between technology, teacher learning, creative risk taking, and failure. Austin Public Schools (APS) and the LT Media Lab (LTML) have been engaged in a research-practice partnership (RPP) for seven…

A reform of public education in Japan took place from the 1980s, coming to a de facto end in 2013. The reform, which affected large numbers of Japanese children, focused on creating a more flexible, relaxed form of education by reducing the amount included in the curriculum. However, the effects of this reform have been ambiguous, and we therefore…