There is currently no designated policy, procedure or staff in place to facilitate the objective of increasing student yield. As a result, magnet applications and acceptance of invitations to attend Owl Middle School is approached without a strategy which makes planning difficult and negates the ability to determine effective methods. Filling…

The state of Texas requires that each district and campus write an annual improvement plan (Texas Education Code, n.d.b). Although this study was conducted in Texas concerning Texas districts and campuses, it would be reasonable to assume that most, if not all, of the other states in the U.S. have similar improvement planning processes. The…

This review of initial teacher education (ITE) in Jamaica highlights the policies, pivotal events, educational initiatives and reforms that have shaped the landscape of teacher education in Jamaica over the last 50 years. It offers a critical reflection on the provision of ITE and the findings of a recent report on education in Jamaica, which…

African American students are under-enrolled in gifted and honors programs due to external and internal factors, which are explained in this Executive Leadership Portfolio (ELP). To address this problem, I have studied the APEX program, a predominantly African American honors program based at East Side Charter School in Wilmington, Delaware, and…

Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) provide opportunities for researchers to support school districts in addressing the complex challenges they face. Cynthia E. Coburn, William R. Penuel, and Caitlin C. Farrell situate RPPs in the history of educational research and discuss the needs they were designed to address. They then describe what…

Efficient use of resources depends upon many factors, but one key variable is the extent to which we design and implement activities which require funding in a way that is informed by relevant evidence. The application of insights about 'what works', derived from robust research, combined with evidence about context and real-time system data have,…

For more than a year, the Learning Policy Institute (LPI) conducted research in New Mexico, including interviews, site visits, document review, and new analyses of data provided by the New Mexico Public Education Department (NMPED). The purpose of the study was to provide New Mexico leaders a research perspective on the challenges facing education…

This final brief in the series focuses on policy options that can foster more innovation and address challenges in career education (CE) program development. It is based on earlier research for a series of reports called "Career Opportunities," aimed at identifying ways that state and system policy can best support the CE mission of the…

This empirical study of Ethiopia school leadership examines the nation's leadership preparation programs through the lens of school leaders and a document analysis of national policies as well as narrated accounts of university preparation programs. To meet the expectations of the Millennium Development Goals of 2000, Ethiopia undertook…

Despite research showing that high-quality early education can be extremely beneficial, a large percentage of American children do not attend preschool. In addition, children from low-income families are less likely to enroll in preschool and more likely to attend low-quality early education programs. One reason for this outcome involves low…

Military leaders, both active duty and General Schedule (GS), must understand cyber warfare with its environmental connections and rapid evolution while finding ways to develop strategies that may lessen threats and attacks to government infrastructure. The Department of Defense (DoD) sought training and certification programs from the civilian…

"Questioning the Language of Improvement and Reform in Education" challenges the language used in education by linking the language of both the public and professional domains with the changing intentions of the governance of education. Exploring various issues, which embody the many manifestations of the manner in which strident,…

In this Policy Memo, the author considers the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's newest effort, focused on "Networks for School Improvement," and how this initiative can learn from the Foundation's own past initiatives as well as from research evidence more generally. The author worries that in K-12 education, the Foundation has…

This brief reviews state plans submitted to the U.S. Department of Education as of October 1, 2017. It focuses on three key topics for early learning in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA): setting clear goals and policy priorities for early learning, integrating early learning into school improvement, and supporting early childhood educator…

This article presents a study that aimed to understand the contributions of self-evaluation (SE) processes towards the development of curricular and social justice and educational improvement. The study focuses on data collected from the schools' external evaluation (SEE) process and from the TEIP programme (Educational Territories of Priority…