This qualitative case study provides insight on the organizational changes and experiences that teachers, administrators and support staff at one elementary school in Rhode Island have had with the implementation of a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) Framework. The Burke and Litwin (1992) Causal Model of Organizational Performance and Change…

The National Implementation Research Network (NIRN) and the National Center for School Turnaround (2018) published the "Four Domains for Rapid School Improvement: An Implementation Framework" as a companion to the Center for School Turnaround's (2017) recent publication of "The Four Domains for Rapid School Improvement: A Systems…

In 2017 the Texas Education Agency (TEA) launched the Systems of Great Schools (SGS) initiative. With a combination of incentives and capacity building, SGS attempts to transform how school districts approach school improvement. It calls on districts to manage school performance in new ways, expand access to school choice options, and take a…

In this brief we summarize findings from three surveys that sought to learn how county offices of education (COEs) are changing in response to the implementation of the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) and the Statewide System of Support (SSS). COEs have been assigned critically important responsibilities in the implementation of these…

The Center on School Turnaround at WestEd has developed a framework to assist states, districts, and schools in leading and managing rapid improvement efforts. The framework shares, in practical language, the critical practices of successful school turnaround in four domains, or areas of focus, that research and experience suggest are central to…

This capstone examines how a newly formed senior-level team worked together to complete a complex task, while driving towards a larger goal of becoming a learning organization. For the 2014-2015 academic year, central office leaders in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) worked to develop a new approach to the execution of their…

This report investigates factors that drive teachers to embrace or challenge the use of products and services designed to support improvements in practice. Key elements of the study include: (1) Technology-based resources studied include those designed for video observations, peer feedback and collaboration, online professional learning, and…

As researchers, decision-makers, and practitioners focus on continuous improvement in education, local-level change is gaining importance. Yet, many local school improvement efforts fail to be fully implemented. Even those that are fully implemented often fail to sustain improvements because the schools are embedded in systems that face multiple…

Over the past decade, universities in Ireland have been implementing large-scale institutional change designed to better prepare them for the multitude of pressures they face. Changes have been taking place, for example, in approaches to institutional management and leadership practices and in decision-making structures. However, despite the rapid…

Although evaluation serves many purposes in education, there is virtually unanimous agreement that evaluation is a critical component of all school improvement processes. Hamilton et al. (2003) asserted that "assessment and evaluation should be built into reform programs from the outset" (p. 26). Kimball, Lander, and Thorn (2010)…

During the past several years, school systems have implemented a variety of organizational improvement initiatives, such as Six Sigma, Balanced Scorecards, Baldrige Criteria, activity-based costing, and managing for results. Unfortunately, evidence of sustained success is fleeting as school districts remain trapped in a time warp of command,…

The authors' purpose for this article is to describe a K-12 public school district's journey to internalize and actualize its mission, strategic planning and vision as one coherent engagement using Lean principles and tools. Lean jointly comprises an organizational philosophy and management toolkit prominent in private, government, and nonprofit…

School improvement can be a complex, messy business. At its most basic, school improvement is change--change that might require people to abandon long-held beliefs and practices, shift roles, and learn new skills. Kilgore and Reynolds (2011) suggested that successful change requires that people change their perceptions as well as their actions.…

New "autonomy initiatives" aim to increase schools' decision-making authority as a strategy to leverage school improvement. These policies build on lessons of previous reforms such as site-based management in ways that bode well for their success. However, how are these policies actually faring in implementation? The authors addressed that…

This paper discusses the challenge of making large-scale improvements in literacy in schools across an entire education system. Despite growing interest and rhetoric, there are very few examples of sustained, large-scale change efforts around school-age literacy. The paper reviews 2 instances of such efforts, in England and Ontario. After…