Despite decades of increasing assessment activity in higher education, the literature provides few examples of assessment leading to improved student learning (Banta & Blaich, 2011). The simple model for learning improvement provides an avenue for linking assessment efforts with faculty development and pedagogical changes in order to increase…

Coaching is an increasingly used professional development approach involving ongoing, individualized teacher-coach exchanges hypothesized to drive immediate changes in teachers' practices with students. Examining this hypothesis, the present study quantifies marginal changes after individual coaching cycles in a set of commonly considered,…

COVID-19 disrupted schools across the country. Students and teachers were asked to work together virtually. During this virtual experience the students at Frederick County Middle School struggled to complete learning activities independently. An improvement science approach was used to investigate this problem. Through the improvement science…

A case study was implemented in one rural district as it transitioned to a trauma-informed environment. A theoretical framework based on the literature framed the data collection around the seven themes of awareness, positive culture, intentional instruction, restorative practice, self-care, mental health support services, and professional…

Turnaround interventions often require or encourage low-performing schools to replace teachers, assuming that schools will recruit high-performing teachers who remain effective after transferring. However, teacher effectiveness may change after transferring, which could explain why some teacher replacement efforts do not improve student…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present the successful school and principal (SSP) model, which has developed over 13 years of Israeli involvement in the ISSPP study. Design/methodology/approach: This is a conceptual paper summarizing the findings of more than 20 case studies of successful, coasting and low-performing schools and their…

The state government uses turnaround models to improve chronically low-performing schools. The effectiveness of this intervention is not yet known. There was a need for research to identify the extent to which state regional education agencies and the school units they served aligned school structures and systems health to create a model for…

To identify the ways teachers and educational systems can improve learning, researchers need to make causal inferences. Analyses of existing datasets play an important role in detecting causal patterns, but conducting experiments also plays an indispensable role in this research. In this article, we advocate for experiments to be embedded in real…

In response to the recession that began in 2007, the U.S. Congress passed, and President Barack Obama signed into law, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Pub. Law 111-5). At an estimated cost of $831 billion, this economic stimulus package sought to save and create jobs, provide temporary relief to those adversely affected by the…

In response to the recession that began in 2007, the U.S. Congress passed, and President Barack Obama signed into law, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Pub. Law 111-5). At an estimated cost of $831 billion, this economic stimulus package sought to save and create jobs, provide temporary relief to those adversely affected by the…

Oakton Community College (Oakton) launched a Pathways to Results (PTR) project for the first time in 2014, a decision that converged with the launch of an all-college student success team with the goal of making evidence-based decisions to significantly improve student success. Oakton chose to work initially on its manufacturing program.…

This paper refers to whole school interventions aiming to promote student learning outcomes through improving the functioning of school factors. Evaluation studies of these interventions mainly measure their impact on student learning outcomes. This paper argues for the importance of studying the mechanisms of whole school interventions through…

There has been a proliferation of high school reform models and interventions over the past few decades aimed at improving the nation's high schools, including increasing graduation requirements, introducing technology to classrooms, grouping ninth-grade students into their own "academies," reorienting the curriculum toward particular…

Non-Governmental Organizations play an indispensable role in the development process in Sub-Saharan Africa. This is evident in the educational sector where most major donor organizations have increased the resources apportioned through NGOs to implement their educational programmes. However, it is sad to indicate that these interventions appear…

This introduction to the special issue on Reading Recovery situates the enterprise in a broader educational reform context that has placed a priority on developing and fielding large-scale, systemic interventions that support ambitious instructional practice and student outcomes. Within this context, Reading Recovery is examined as an evolving,…