This research explored the knowledge, skills, and strategies early childhood teachers possess related to implementing curriculum and authentic assessment. Research suggests that early educators rate their knowledge of curriculum and authentic assessment and their implementation of both as excellent. Despite these self-reported, high levels of…

This article raises important questions about whether the increasing control of early years education through performance data is genuinely a means for school improvement. This composite article, examines the pervasiveness of attainment data in early years education professional activity, its impact on early years teachers' consciousness and…

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) asked the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) and the Higher Education Academy (HEA) to undertake research to explore the current issues around academic teaching qualifications in the HESA Staff record and to offer recommendations to improve data quality and coverage in future…

Central to the mission of most educational institutions is the task of preparing the next generation of citizens to contribute to society. Schools, colleges, and universities value a range of outcomes--e.g., problem solving, creativity, collaboration, citizenship, service to community--as well as academic outcomes in traditional subjects. Often…

This study examined teacher and administrator perceptions of their school as a learning organization and the degree to which students graduate "college-ready." The study followed a mixed-methods design to explore the hypothesis that the extent to which teachers and administrators perceive their school as a learning organization is…

In response to the need to develop leaders to guide the implementation of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), the Carnegie Corporation of New York provided funding to WestEd to develop a framework that defines the leadership knowledge and actions needed to effectively implement the NGSS. The development of the framework entailed…

The Success By 6® (SB6) initiative is designed to support early care and education centers in improving and sustaining quality in Pennsylvania's Keystone STARS Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS). The SB6 evaluation report examines implementation and outcomes. The findings have implications for SB6 continous quality improvement process…

Listening closely to what students say about their school experiences can be beneficial to educators for understanding and addressing school-related topics and problems and rethinking policies and practices. The purpose of this toolkit is to provide educators with a purposeful and systematic way to elicit and listen to student voice to inform…

A growing number of schools are implementing PLCs to address school improvement, staff engage with data to identify student needs and determine instructional interventions. This is a starting point for engaging in the iterative process of learning for the teach in order to increase student learning (Hord & Sommers, 2008). The iterative process…

Although much has been written about the potential benefits of effective data use in schools, considerably less attention has been paid to how schools make sense of the data generated from performance-based accountability measures. This article explores schools' usage of state test data, the intensity of data use, and the perceived utility of…

As district- and school-level leaders face increasing pressure from federal, state, and local accountability mandates there has been increased dependence on using and analyzing student data to help improve student performance. While the reporting of disaggregated data by student subgroup confirms that achievement gaps exist, it does not provide…

Measuring of performance for lecturers' has become a popular event not only in the Botswana academic environment but in many parts of the world (16). Being charged with responsibilities as an AAT Team Leader the researcher was interested in getting feedbacks for faculty members in his department. This study focused on the relationship between…

This chapter presents data from a 15-year, mixed-methods school improvement effort. The High Reliability Schools (HRS) reform made use of previous research on school effects and on High Reliability Organizations (HROs). HROs are organizations in various parts of our cultures that are required to operate successfully "the first time, every…

This report describes and explains how to use the School Survey of Practices Associated with High Performance, which measures the degree to which schools are engaging in practices associated with high performance. State education departments and school districts can use the survey results to identify and describe school practices associated with…

The use of data for educational decision making has never been more prevalent. However, teachers and school leaders need support in data use. Support can be provided by means of professional development in the form of "data teams". This study followed the functioning of 4 data teams over a period of 2 years, applying a qualitative case…