Effective measures of the quality of services provide transparent and accountable standards to examine and illustrate high-quality care and contributions to client outcomes. They identify priorities for professional development action planning and allow practitioners to detect gaps in knowledge. Drawn from the need to measure and articulate…

Because of the increase of the rigor of state standards and of accountability, the Lincoln County School District sought to become a part of the state Teacher Leader Network during the 2016-2017 school year as a way to provide teachers best practices for improving the culture and climate of their schools, participating in collaborative…

Accountability mechanisms and processes have evolved with changes in statute. State Education Agency (SEA) accountability systems may exhibit characteristics of compliance- and/or improvement-focused systems in light of requirements under the "Elementary and Secondary Education Act" (ESEA) and its reauthorizations under the…

Quality partnerships are imperative for successful project implementation. The partnership between project personnel and independent evaluators is often overlooked. In effective partnerships, both the evaluators and the education project management team collectively ensure that educational initiatives are well-planned, executed, and assessed. This…

Since the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in December 2015, state education agencies (SEAs) have invested much time, effort, and resources into designing their accountability systems so that they reflect the state's vision and priorities and are in compliance with federal statute. Over the course of the past year, each state has…

With an increased emphasis on instructional accountability with respect to instruction, assessment and curriculum development, administrators have been struggling to find a model of supervision that is clinical and collaborative and that will produce an accurate assessment of classroom instruction. According to Goe (2007), "In recent years,…

The effort described in this article resulted from requests for clarity and consistency from new and existing Extension/4-H educators as well as from recommendations by university auditors. The primary purpose of the effort was to clarify standards for effective county-based 4-H youth development programs and to help focus the roles of 4-H…

This report is drafted with state leaders and policy makers in mind, including those who work with or support these education leaders. The information shared in this report will likely be most relevant to states that have either not yet considered a new data system on teacher preparation providers, are only now starting to consider the idea, or…

Just what is meant by a "Best Practice"? A best practice is a procedure, a process, or a system, adopted by best performing districts, which has a noticeable long-term positive impact on the strategic objectives of the Procurement organization. The concept of "best practices" is a fluid one. As technology, regulations and…

The mandate that teachers are accountable for student performance has driven states to initiate new evaluation instruments for administrator use to assess teachers. This study examined leaders' perceptions of a first-time statewide accountability instrument used for teacher assessment in one southern state, with 230 K-12 principals anonymously…

State report cards should help families, educators, policymakers, and other critical stakeholders in various states understand and act on education information for schools, school districts, and states as a whole. While each state finds itself in a different place regarding its own progress in building state report cards with such an impact,…

This report describes the Achieve 180 Program in Year 3, the last of the three years initially planned for this comprehensive program. The 54 participating schools received Texas Education Agency campus accountability ratings of "Improvement Required" (IR), "Not Rated," or "Former Improvement Required". The 2019-2020…

The pivot point for educational change is now firmly placed with the district, rebalancing the position of the state and the school relative to the local education agency (LEA). The state education agency (SEA) has been shifting its emphasis for decades, from a compliance-focused authority to a change agent equipped with systems, processes,…

The authors discuss the long-term accumulation of unstandardized and inaccessible content within the Libguides system and the decision-making process to create and implement a set of standards using the migration to the LibGuides2 platform as a vehicle for change. Included in the discussion are strategies for the creation of standards and…

In November 2012, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation invested in seven innovative district-charter partnerships with "the potential capacity and commitment to accelerate student college ready rates through deep collaboration and sharing of best practices" (District-Charter Collaboration Grant Request for Proposal [RFP]). These…