An urban middle school goes through the transformation of becoming a university-supported lab school. Drawing upon design thinking principles, the planning team cultivates a sense of shared empathy, creative problem-solving, and an ethos of curiosity and learning in a collaborative environment.

The chapter focuses on the implementation of the school choice reform in Swedish schools during the 1990s. The success of school choice, which is shown in the rapid expansion of the number of charter schools, is seen as a response to a "monopolistic policy", i.e. a school policy that is not aligned with the expectations of certain social…

This study investigated the factors that pushed and pulled social justice educators out of urban elementary and secondary (K-12) schools and into teacher education. The authors utilized an autoethnography and counternarrative methodology to examine the systemic and distinct factors that impacted four social justice educators' decisions to leave…

The current national community college redesign effort, Guided Pathways, focuses on the need for "clearer, more educationally coherent programs of study that simplify students' choices without limiting their options." In "Redesigning America's Community Colleges," the authors Thomas Bailey, Shanna Jaggars, and Davis Jenkins…

We focus on describing some of the effects of austerity capitalism in the public educational sector in Poland, a country that was a part of the Soviet bloc from WWII and experienced dramatic transformation after 1989. This transformation from "communism" to "democracy" involved all spheres of the life of society and individuals…

This article discusses how the call for families' active participation in school can be understood as a form of regulatory act producing neoliberal subjectivities based on responsibility, entrepreneurship and rational calculation. The analysis draws on the results of two projects aiming to improve the relationship between families of Spanish Roma…

Higher-level music education was in a poor state in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. In particular, the country's most significant conservatoire, the Royal Academy of Music in London, suffered from a lack of financial support, poor management, and a reputation for mediocre teaching and amateurish standards. Responding to the need for an overhaul,…

Too many students still experience the factory model evident in most U.S. high schools, which were designed to put young people on a conveyor belt and move them from one overloaded teacher to the next, in 45-minute increments, to be stamped with separate, disconnected lessons 7 or 8 times a day. While these factory-model designs may have worked…

This case study, framed within a school-university partnership, highlights the tensions inherent to employing design-based approaches for educational change. The case illustrates core tensions between an abductive, open-ended, design-based approach to change versus more traditional (deductive/inductive) approaches to managing change in schools.…

The National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE) convened its Task Force on Early Childhood Education in the larger context of educational reform of the 1980s, which was characterized by two competing perspectives. One focused on state-mandated testing and increased graduation requirements, in response to the alarm sounded by the…

Across the country, school district superintendents are transforming into community school leaders. Responsible for systems of learning that also include school nutrition, bussing, safety, finances, community engagement, and so much more, superintendents recognize that they need a different strategy to effectively address the learning needs of the…

Being a cheerleader for innovation or change is great. Implementing specific strategies to increase the likelihood of success is essential. In this key book from bestselling author and speaker Todd Whitaker, you'll discover clear ways to lead and manage school change by setting realistic goals, planning your approach, and tracking your progress.…

Sixty-six school districts and more than 150 schools in the state of Kansas are participating in the Kansans Can Redesign Project. In this article, we present a case study of using Design Thinking as a systemic process to structure continuous school improvement. The collage of real-life scenarios presented in our case shows the integration of…

Charter takeovers are traditional public schools restarted as charter schools. We develop a grandfathering instrument for takeover attendance that compares students at schools designated for takeover with a matched sample of students attending similar schools not yet taken over. Grandfathering estimates from New Orleans show substantial gains from…

Across the United States, schools and districts are redesigning high school toward the goal of better engaging and preparing students for success after graduation. This report highlights four innovation schools and districts--(1) Noble High School in Maine; (2) International High School at Langley Park in Maryland; (3) the Science and Math…