In partnership with the Mayor of Baltimore City and Baltimore City Public Schools (City Schools), Family League of Baltimore (Family League) launched the Community & School Engagement Strategy in school year 2012-13. As part of that process, it intentionally aligned its existing Out of School Time (OST) activities with community schools…

Drawing on deep expertise and diverse experiences in the sector, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) and the Charter School Growth Fund (CSGF) have collaborated to identify a set of key policies and practices that could dramatically accelerate the replication and growth of high-performing charter schools and charter…

High school improvement initiatives often focus on specific intervention strategies, programs, or priority topics (e.g., dropout intervention, dual enrollment, freshman academies). However, research shows that systemic and sustainable improvement can be achieved only when initiatives are implemented with consideration for the broader education…

This study followed all freshman community college students in California who had demonstrated the intent to transfer from 1996, 1997, and 1998. Outcomes were assessed for each of the three entering cohorts after six years (2002-2004) and students were linked with their high schools of origin and the 4-year colleges to which they transferred. The…

The Century Foundation released The Future of School Integration: Socioeconomic Diversity as an Education Reform Strategy, edited by senior fellow Richard D. Kahlenberg. The volume seeks to answer important questions about how socioeconomic integration plans are faring and to provide guidance for how they can be sustained and expanded in the…

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) has had several tangible effects on education and the monitoring of education. There have been both intended and unintended consequences. ESEA's newer generation of federal programs, such as Race to the Top, and the recent ESEA flexibility guidelines, have continued to push development of methods…

District-led, dramatic change efforts in failing schools--including turnarounds and school closures--often face strong resistance from families and communities. Resistance may be based on years of tension and distrust between districts and communities, failed past school improvement efforts, or a lack of understanding about the chasm between a…

Background: Schools are increasingly confronted with the challenges that information about school performance brings with it. It is common for schools' use of performance feedback to be limited. Equally, however, there are documented cases in which school performance feedback is meaningfully used. Purpose: This study looks at how Flemish primary…

By September 2009 there were approximately 30,000 higher level teaching assistants (HLTAs) in English schools. All of these HLTAs are expected to be able to deliver pre-set lessons in place of a teacher. Often, they are determining the pedagogical approach and range of activities used to deliver the lesson's objectives. Consequently, there is a…

This article reports research conducted recently into evaluation policy. The research comprises two parts: a questionnaire survey and qualitative interviews. Drawing from data collected in a survey of 65 curriculum leaders and interviews with 12 from the group, the article discusses how school evaluation policy functions to help make schools…

Two Management-Oriented Samples details two examples of the management-oriented approach to program evaluation. Kenneth Alford, a doctorate candidate at the University of the Cumberlands, details two separate program evaluations conducted in his school district and seeks to compare and contrast the two evaluations based upon the characteristics of…

The purpose of Deborah R. Mayerson was to assess the relative impact of climate, trust, and bureaucratic structure upon teachers' perceptions of organizational effectiveness. An existing data set compiled by Nancy Casella (2006) for her dissertation was analyzed. The data consisted of questionnaire responses of a random sample of 220 public school…

In France, as in many other countries, there is an ongoing debate on how residence-based assignment to schools affects both educational and residential segregation. Theoretical models (including Benabou, 1993; Fernandez and Rogerson, 1996; Epple and Romano, 2003; Rothstein, 2006) have shown that the existence of peer effects in education yields…

Last year, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan set forth an ambitious goal for the country--turn around 1,000 of chronically failing schools per year over the next five years. To support this effort, the federal government has put up billions of dollars in funding, mostly in the form of Title I School Improvement Grants (SIG). SIG, both in the…

New York City's leading teachers' union signaled that it will not give up its fight to keep the city from closing bad schools. The Department of Education administers voluntary surveys to parents and teachers in each of its public and charter schools. The results of these surveys account for about 10 percent of the accountability score used to…