This study examined a differentiated, bottom-up approach to school improvement planning through exploration of the qualities that make up a highly effective school department team as it related to their ability to create and meet a student-centered, data driven high achievement goal. While there are a multitude of factors that affect the ability…

Research on school improvement has accumulated an extensive list of factors that facilitate turnarounds at underperforming schools. Given that context or resource constraints may limit the possibilities of putting all of these factors in place, an important question is what is necessary and sufficient to turn a school around. We use qualitative…

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to outline how far the empirical evidence supports the centrality of leadership in the process of improving underperforming schools. Design/methodology/approach: This article draws on evidence from a contemporary, selected, review of the literature. Findings: The findings show that leadership is the critical…

This study expands on our previous research focusing on provincial educational policies to support students' academic resilience during the pandemic, with the current focus being on the "recovery phase" of the pandemic (January 2022 to December 2023). Our analysis identified 46 provincial documents that addressed one or more of the three…

In this paper, we investigate how professional cultures and situated, material and external contexts relate to dynamic low- and underperforming schools in Scandinavia, particularly how the leadership is constructed through the leader, the followers and the situation. The first school studied was a low-performing school in Norway called…

This playbook addresses the "how" in the continuous improvement process, focusing on schools and communities. It is a step-by-step guide for superintendents, principals, staff, and communities on how to engage in the school continuous improvement cycle while recognizing the unique assets and challenges of communities and their schools.…

This conceptual paper aims to annotate the existing practices and actions of entrepreneurial education in Cyprus and Greece educational organizations taking into account the centralized school contexts. At the same time, it presents the literature background regarding the new principal's role in the 21st century in order to provide adequate school…

The article aims to outline the proposals for linking school effectiveness research and school improvement that are currently relevant in international discussion and to ask how they deal with the 'technology deficit' at the level of model improvement. We will first show the difference between school improvement and school effectiveness. Then, we…

For more than two decades, federal law has required states to identify schools failing to provide students with a high-quality education and has led to substantial debate about how best to do so. Appropriately identifying the lowest performing schools matters because it allows state and local education agencies to target limited resources for…

This is the appendices for the full report, "Identifying the Nation's Lowest Performing Schools: Shifts Following the Passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)." This study examines state identification of schools for the most intensive support to see how changes in federal laws and regulations played out nationally and at the…

Based on a belief that providing all students with the best opportunities for academic success requires a constant focus on improvement, the North Dakota Department of Public Instruction (NDDPI), in partnership with the Region 11 Comprehensive Center, released the latest version of its School Renewal Guide for North Dakota Public Schools. Using…

This article explores external facilitation for school improvement; more specifically, it examines the practical work of external facilitators. It is based on a Swedish case in which facilitators at the Swedish National Agency for Education support low-performing schools. The article aims to develop knowledge about how external facilitators in…

Understanding what contributes to improving a system will help us tackle the problems in education systems that usually fail disproportionately in providing quality education for all, especially for the most disadvantage sectors of the population. This paper presents the results of a qualitative systematic literature review aimed at providing a…

Research on school improvement has accumulated an extensive list of factors that facilitate turnarounds at underperforming schools. Given that contextual or resource constraints may limit the possibilities of putting all of these factors in place, an important question is what is necessary and sufficient to turn a school around. We use a…

The problem addressed in this study was that teachers struggle to apply the middle school concept in three middle schools in the U.S. region of New England. This study was a qualitative investigation of teachers' perceptions of the middle school concept and their needs for additional support to effectively apply it. The conceptual framework for…