Research shows supportive partnerships between school districts and universities can enhance school district performance. Such a relationship was used to address the problem of lacking quality instructional leadership capacity of school leaders placed in target turnaround school settings to improve teacher efficacy and student achievement. The…

This project aims to gain insight into the mechanisms by which schools in highly challenging environments avoided learning loss--or even improved--during the pandemic. Using a unique dataset covering multiple levels of school, health, and environmental data, we examine which factors led schools to 'beat the odds' when it comes to learning…

As improving low-performing schools has become a critical strategy to achieve educational equity in China, local educational departments have implemented various school collaboration programs. Drawing on international literature and empirical data from in-depth interviews and policy documents in two Chinese urban districts, this multiple-case…

While multiple studies have examined the impact of school turnaround, less is known about reforms under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). To advance this literature, we examine North Carolina's Restart (NCR) model. NCR aligns with ESSA by giving school leaders increased flexibility. Also, NCR differs from previous turnaround models by…

Prior to the 2012-13 school year, New York and many other states underwent changes to their accountability systems as a result of applying for and being granted waivers from the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. A key component of these new accountability systems, under what is known as ESEA Flexibility or NCLB Waivers, was the…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine if there is a relationship between transformational leadership style, school climate, student conduct, and student attendance in urban elementary schools. Survey data were collected from a purposeful sample of elementary school principals and a convenience sample of their staff members in an…

Purpose: In this manuscript, we aimed to (1) illustrate the differences in school-university partnership under the school reform and renewal models and (2) describe the practice of and learning about school-university partnership by reflecting on the three large, federally funded projects, all conducted under the school renewal model.…

The recent Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires states to identify and turn around their lowest performing schools, but it breaks somewhat from prior policies by granting states significant autonomy over how they identify and turn around these schools. This mixed-methods study, which draws on administrative, qualitative, and survey data,…

Collaboration and networking have been widely recognized and adopted as strategies for school turnaround. However, most studies focus on external forces' (particularly governments') role in promoting collaborative turnaround, paying less attention to turnaround schools' reactions to external actors. With specific reference to Shanghai, China, this…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) offers states increased flexibility in how they identify, rank, label, and support underperforming schools. Initial reviews of state ESSA plans, however, suggest that identification and labeling policies have remained relatively unchanged. In this study, we analyze all state ESSA plans to systematically…

While network governance in education has been widely discussed in the literature, research focusing on the behaviours of and interactions between pluralist actors is rare, and the power exercised by China's local governments in network governance is under-researched. This study uses school turnaround, a networking process that involves multiple…

School improvement in chronically under-performing schools remains a formidable challenge for school leaders. Recent policies in the U.S. have created incentives for school leaders to attempt new strategies to improve outcomes, and increasingly, school leaders of charter management organizations and other multi-school organizations (MSOs) are…

The purpose of this mixed-method study was to determine what factors contribute to the sustained success of schools after they have undergone the turnaround process and moved into the longer process of school transformation by identifying the relationship between principal leadership style and organizational structures that were implemented in…

Purpose: This paper considers the implications of reform efforts that rely on charter management organizations to assume operational control of underperforming neighborhood schools. The purpose of this paper is to examine the way in which changes to the education sector place enormous pressure on these organizations to both manage instruction and…

Governments have injected billions of dollars into the massive school improvement industry, but little is known about the providers that offer services and whether their services actually improve schools. Bryan VanGronigen and Coby Meyers highlight their research the topic, which has found that few states monitor and evaluate provider performance…