This case study reports on the work of Denise Watts, who in 2011 was the newly named Project L.I.F.T. executive director and a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools zone superintendent. She approached Public Impact for help in meeting the new Project L.I.F.T. (Leadership and Investment for Transformation) goals. Facing urgent needs for real change, Watts…

There's a lot of work happening all over the country to "turnaround" schools. Federal stimulus programs, including Title 1 Improvement Grants and Race to the Top, have caused many states and school systems to focus on how to address schools trapped in a cycle of failure and "turn them around." On the school level, there are…

The teaching profession has long been structured around full-time classroom responsibilities that are defined by the location, timing, and schedule of the school day and a ubiquitous one-teacher-per-classroom model. In most districts, the only option for highly successful teachers to advance in the profession or serve more students is to leave the…

Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP) teams are by definition comprised of professionals from a variety of disciplines who are trained to determine recommendations for the services they deliver. Research indicates that when more people are on the IFSP team, families may feel less supported, and diminished child outcomes can result. However,…

The approaches to management of part-time lecturing staff in the United Kingdom's further education (FE) colleges were examined in a study that included the following research activities: review of relevant publications and Further Education Funding Council (FEFC) statistics; postal survey of 454 FE colleges in England and Wales that elicited 67…

Two-year colleges' staff development practices are examined so as to highlight issues, concerns, and problems; outline possible solutions; and offer alternative models. A brief review of the topical literature opens the report, followed by discussion of the "Change Agent Study" (Rand Corporation's four-year study of federally funded programs to…

A study was conducted to evaluate the Boston Public Schools Career Exploration Project. The project model contained assumptions regarding need for a significant amount of funding, a teacher training program, phased implementation with a concentration of effort in pilot schools, substantial amounts of materials, creation of positions of leadership,…