Given dwindling budgets, collaborations that can enhance effective and efficient use of resources increase in importance. This is particularly important with respect to efforts at schools to provide student and learning supports. Schools that formally connect to work together can be more effective, realize economies of scale, and enhance the way…

Obviously, a small school has less staff and other resources than most larger schools. Nevertheless, the three major functions necessary for school improvement remain the same in all schools, namely (1) improving instruction, (2) providing learning supports to address barriers to learning and teaching, and (3) enhancing management and governance.

For those concerned with school improvement, resource-oriented mechanisms are a critical facet of efforts to transform and restructure daily operations. Resource-oriented organizational mechanisms focus specifically on ensuring the appropriate use of existing resources and enhancing efforts to address barriers to student learning. This report…

Resource-oriented organizational mechanisms focus specifically on ensuring the appropriate use of existing resources and enhancing efforts to address barriers to student learning. This report first explores such mechanisms at the school level, then in terms of a feeder pattern, and finally at the district level. We stress the fact that what we…

Major points emphasized in this report include: (1) School improvement planning is not appropriately and effectively addressing barriers to learning; (2) Leaders for student/learning supports must mobilize and prepare student support personnel to become an integral and effective agent in school improvement planning and decision making; and (3) The…

It is time for reform advocates to expand their emphasis on improving instruction and school management to include a comprehensive component for addressing barriers to learning. In doing so, they must pursue this third component with the same level of priority they devote to the other two. That is, such an enabling (or learner support) component…

Properly conceived and implemented new initiatives are essential to improving schools and communities. Such new initiatives usually are pursued as projects, pilots, or demonstrations, with temporary funding and staffing. When the funding ends, more often than not much of what has been developed disappears. Sometimes this is appropriate (e.g., when…

Given the range of student learning, behavior, and emotional problems experienced each day by teachers and families, meeting the challenge of supplying appropriate support is complex. Efforts to do so may be handicapped by the way in which student support interventions currently are conceived, organized, and implemented. Student supports are…