A qualitative case study was conducted on the Mooresville Graded School Districts's (MGSD) digital conversion for the entire school district. MGSD is a semi-rural small suburban school district with 5,450 students kindergarten through twelfth grade. The school district consists of three elementary schools, two intermediate schools, one middle…

While the 2011-2012 school year offered educators a sketch of the Common Core State Standards and how they would impact teaching and learning, this year that painting takes shape. Many states and districts are well on the way to implementing the standards--but the process is complex, especially for the school leaders who shoulder the task of…

Since Programs of Study (POS) were introduced in 2006, implementation has been uneven around the country. POS were one of the landmark features of the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act (Perkins Act), and have been one of the biggest areas of focus during its implementation. In 2009, the U.S. Department of Education's Office of…

We are at a transformative moment in education with the almost universal adoption (forty-five states, the District of Columbia, and four territories) of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). As we move from adoption to implementation of these standards across the country, the climate for educational reform has led to expectations of change that…

Given that there is no universal way to measure implementation fidelity, instructional designers developing instructional innovations may find themselves faced with the challenge of determining the extent to which teachers' implementation of an instructional model is faithful. This article contends that a faithful implementation is one in…

This is a critical reflection on the results of a study that the French International Center for Pedagogical Studies (CIEP) piloted in 2008-2009 in five sub-Saharan African countries which were implementing curriculum reforms adopting the "competency-based approach". The article refers to a seminar on this process and the ideas expressed…

Academic institutions modified their financial conflict of interest policies (FCOI) in response to the Public Health Service's (PHS) 2011 revised regulations (42 CFR 50 Subpart F) on "Responsibility of Applicants for Promoting Objectivity in Research and Responsible Prospective Contractors" (45 CFR 94), which were to go into effect on…

The following document represents a Problem Based Learning Project (PBL) around the central theme of school improvement, the components of school improvement, and the importance of the presence and interaction of five central components of school improvement. Five central components, or constructs, identified and selected from a breadth of…

State education agencies (SEAs) are under fire and face new expectations from all sides. The federal government, state legislatures and governors, and citizens themselves are calling upon the SEA to do "more"--more to improve outcomes for students, more to close the achievement gap, and more to meet the diverse instructional needs of students.…

The Common Core State Standards, adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia, raise the bar for what students need to learn at each stage of their K-12 education. The goal is to better prepare students for college and careers. The most important thing that education leaders can do to help the Common Core succeed is to support teachers in…

In April 2011, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) hosted a Forum, Emphasizing Evidence-Based Programs for Children and Youth, to convene the nation's leading practitioners and researchers with experience using and evaluating an array of evidence-based…

Students cannot benefit from education practices they do not experience. While this seems obvious (and it is), education systems have yet to develop the capacity to help all teachers learn to make good use of evidence-based practices that enhance the quality of education for all students. The purpose of this Brief is to provide a framework that…

In this article, the author talks about the challenges faced by two schools that lie, coincidentally, just 110 miles apart in the vast spaces of North Dakota. Both schools, members of the North Dakota University System, decided to forge ahead with a unified communications (UC) implementation. And while their final solutions differ, how the two…

The concern about the United States' education attainment levels as compared with those of other countries, and the consequences of this poor showing, were given visibility by the inclusion of international statistics in the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education publication, "Measuring Up 2008." That concern was…

The Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) represents a fundamental transformation of the way California allocates state funds to school districts and the ways the state expects districts to make decisions about (and report on) the use of these funds. This is the first in a series of short briefs that aims to capture some key themes emerging from…