Despite the link between school-lunch participation and student health, only half of adolescents with the program in their schools participate on a given day. A multi-pronged school lunch promotion intervention was implemented in middle and high schools in an urban, low-income school district to improve school lunch participation and reduce food…

The purpose of this evaluation was to understand how a literacy program based on 21st-century learning skills and social emotional learning was implemented and if it exemplified the 21st-Century Classroom Learning Community Framework. The results were used to learn how to improve the implementation of the Collaborative Literacy. Results were also…

This report summarizes the results of the AISD CTE Program Analysis Scorecard for the 2020-2021 school year. The CTE Program Analysis Scorecard results focus on three components of program outcomes: (a) program alignment, (b) quality of instruction, and (c) access and equity. Program outcomes provide information about program effectiveness and…

Social-emotional learning (SEL) programs are frequently evaluated using randomized controlled trial (RCT) methodology as a means to assess program impacts. What is often missing in RCT studies is a robust parallel investigation of the multi-level implementation of the program. The field of implementation science bridges the gap between the RCT…

The SSIP [State Systemic Improvement Plan] Phase II Process Guide describes the steps needed to accomplish the work of the three components of Phase II. Thus, the SSIP Phase II Process Guide is organized according to the following sequential phases of work to be done, rather than by the three components: (1) Kicking off Phase II; (2) Developing…

This study reports on a large-scale implementation of Assessment for Learning (AfL) in a Swedish municipality. The implementation was founded on two principles: (1) teaching should be informed by educational research; (2) to be successful teachers' professional development needs to be based in everyday classroom practice. From these principles,…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report the formative evaluation results from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development Healthy School Communities (HSC) pilot project. Design/methodology/approach: This study utilized 11 HSC pilot sites in the USA (eight sites) and Canada (three sites). The evaluation question was…

The passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), also known as the economic stimulus package, provided an extra $3 billion for school improvement grants (SIGs) under section 1003(g) of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Along with this funding increase, the U.S. Department of Education issued guidance…

Over the last several years, a growing number of cities have invested in early care and education for 3- and 4-year-old children, known as "preschool." This paper aims to aid cities in planning preschool programs by outlining a range of factors to consider. We largely do not make recommendations, but rather try to identify a range of…

It is a historically held principle of microeconomics that in the presence of better information, consumers make better decisions. This chapter focuses on information to guide consumers in making decisions about higher education. It examines the development and implementation of a one-stop career and college planning tool that leverages existing…

The articles in this special issue discuss efforts to improve academic reading outcomes for students and ways to achieve high implementation fidelity of promising strategies. At times the authors discuss if--and how--strong fidelity is associated with strong outcomes and potentially even impacts (the difference between program and control group…

The quest for school improvement is old. The demand for dramatic, immediate school improvement is new. Even as President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan commit $4.3 billion to making 5,000 of the nation's worst-performing schools better now, few people know what that really looks like--or how it actually works. How do school…

This article aims to share experience from a Swedish project on the introduction and implementation of Open Educational Resources (OER) in higher education with both national and international perspectives. The project, "OER--resources for learning", was part of the National Library of Sweden Open Access initiative and aimed at exploring, raising…

As the nation transitions from responding to the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to navigating its ongoing impact on youth and their communities, K-12 students continue to experience mental health and wellbeing challenges. In the fall of 2021, Redwood City School District (RCSD) placed a full-time, district-employed mental health counselor in each…

Seven district improvement initiatives were implemented in 2011-12 in the Wake County Public School System (WCPSS). All were well designed and coordinated, with common goal setting processes and use of common monitoring tools. All initiatives either met or partially met 2011-12 goals. Some were more successful in showing student outcomes, with the…