State support in higher education (HE) is often justified on the grounds that HE is important for the development of the country. However, little analysis is normally done in order to assess the impact of education quality initiatives. The Mexican government has been engaging in a policy of HE quality improvement that can be traced to 1989. In…

To what extent school improvement processes can be initiated and sustained from the outside has been a relevant question for policy-makers seeking to increase quality in education. Since 2008, the Chilean Government is strongly promoting the use of external technical support (ETS) services to support school improvement processes, as part of the…

This report summarizes findings from one component of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education's (CPRE) evaluation of the General Electric Foundation's (GEF) "Developing Futures" ™ in Education program in Erie Public Schools (EPS). As described in the CPRE proposal and research design, the purpose was to closely analyze district…

High-quality care in the earliest years of life has been shown to relate to positive developmental outcomes for children, including improved early academic skills, social-emotional competencies, and cognitive functioning. Unfortunately, the early care experiences of many children are not always high quality; rather, research suggests that…

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) targeted substantial School Improvement Grants (SIGs) to the nation's "persistently lowest achieving" public schools (i.e., up to $2 million per school annually over 3 years) but required schools accepting these awards to implement a federally prescribed school-reform model.…

Since the 2004 reauthorization of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), there has been a growing focus on improving the quality of programs for children with disabilities and measuring the results/outcomes of those programs. Across the country, IDEA Part C Programs for Infants and Toddlers and IDEA Part B, Section 619 Preschool…

Every school is confronted with many concerns about improving students' achievement and well-being and enhancing school climate. While the emphasis shifts, there is constant pressure to do more about learning problems; bullying, harassment, and other forms of violence and acting out behavior at school; substance abuse; disconnected students;…

Governments frequently introduce education policy reforms to improve the educational outcomes of pupils. These often have simultaneous effects on pupils because they are implemented in the same schools and at the same time. In this paper, we evaluate the relative and multiple overlapping effects of two flagship British educational policies--the…

This dissertation investigates the prevailing No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandate as an effective platform to improve schools. The data compiled for use in this study represented 426 high schools in Pennsylvania and were retrieved from publicly accessible, state-sponsored sources. The statistical methodologies from the Pennsylvania Value-Added…

The 12 winners of the federal Race to the Top competition have experienced near-universal challenges in turning their sweeping, multifaceted proposals into reality, among them a limited state capacity to execute fast, dramatic change and deeply rooted teacher-evaluation systems that have proved hard to transform. Reports unveiled by the U.S.…

This article examines what occurred within schools successfully implementing and sustaining Schoolwide Positive Behavior Supports through the lens of leadership capacity. Leadership capacity, a broad-based, skillful participation in leadership, promotes the capabilities of many organizational members to lead. Researchers used quantitative analysis…

This article provides a field-based example of a series of outreach programs that have been designed in response to current recommendations found in the K-12 outreach literature. These programs begin with university mathematics and science faculty members teaching a 10-day summer workshop to elementary and middle school teachers. Following this…

This technical brief responds to an Arizona Department of Education request to study academic performance in schools receiving funding through the federal Title I compensatory education program, the section of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 governing resources for schools and districts serving disadvantaged populations. The brief describes…

In 2010-11, Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) was in district-wide improvement as a result of failing to meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in mathematics at the district level for the second consecutive year. This report examines student outcomes in 2010-11 as well as overall teacher outcomes and longitudinal results for schools targeted…

Using multiple years of data collected from about 100 child care centers in Palm Beach County, Florida, the authors studied whether the Quality Improvement System (QIS) made a significant impact on quality of child care centers. Based on a pre- and postresearch design spanning a period of 13 months, QIS appeared to be effective in improving…