The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), also known as the stimulus package, appropriated $100 billion for education and included $3 billion for school improvement grants (SIGs) to help reform low-performing schools. This amount was in addition to the $546 million provided by the regular fiscal year 2009 appropriations bill for…

Many studies have shown that higher-quality early care and education (ECE) predicts positive developmental gains for the children who experience it. However, much ECE in the United States is not of sufficiently high quality to produce these benefits. Quality rating and improvement systems (QRISs) attempt to improve practice and care quality in ECE…

WICHE (the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education) is a regional, nonprofit organization. WICHE and its 15 member states work to improve access to higher education and ensure student success. Its student exchange programs, regional initiatives, and its research and policy work allow it to assist constituents throughout the West and…

A persistent mathematics achievement gap between African American, Hispanic, and European American students at one elementary school was the focus of this investigation. The research questions of this single site case study involved understanding why an achievement gap exists, and to identify the instructional strategies and best practices used to…

Worldwide, innovation in education is highly perceived as an effectual approach to promote awareness for sustainability. International organizations interested in education, research and training support projects seeking modernization of Higher Education (HE) and put much emphasis on developing new curricula, teaching methods or materials to…

Purpose: This paper assesses the effectiveness of volunteer farmer trainers in promoting adoption of agricultural technologies in western Kenya. Specifically, the purpose was to assess the type of information they disseminated, farmer trainers' characteristics desirable to farmer trainees, and how trainees evaluate farmer trainers.…

After more than a decade (and four years behind schedule) Congress finally seems ready to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. For years, critics have complained that the law's focus on test scores offers far too narrow a picture for judging school quality. There is also concern that the "adequate yearly progress," or…

"NSDC Policy Points" is a newsletter published by the National Staff Development Council (NSDC). This issue of "NSDC Policy Points" focuses on NSDC's advocacy for a powerful new definition of professional development. Based on a model of continuous improvement, the new definition engages educators in a cycle of analyzing data, determining student…

This article discusses a dilemma that confronts reformers who seek to improve the education system yet operate from a position outside that system. On one hand, "external" reformers have found that the implementation of school-level programs is attenuated by a lack of coherence and support in schools' environment. Districts and states…

The U.S. Department of Education's proposed guidelines for awarding $4 billion in Race to the Top Fund money send a strong message that any state hoping to land a competitive grant should expect to allow student test scores to be used in decisions about teacher compensation and evaluation. The draft plans outlined by department officials last…

That advisories in secondary schools are fairly pervasive around the country may be one of the great unintended consequences of the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) reform effort. While no CES Common Principle explicitly states that advisories should exist in schools, as Coalition Schools evolved, advisories became one of the logical ways for…

In this age of accountability and limited funding, community colleges are achieving more with less. Efficiency and effectiveness are keys to innovation. NorthWest Arkansas Community College's Nonacademic Assessment and Improvement Program (NAIP) collects data to study strengths and weaknesses. These efforts culminate in a measurable improvement…

Students' engagement at school has emerged as a critical factor across hundreds of dropout prevention and recovery programs in the United States. By supporting and improving academic, behavioral, cognitive, and emotional engagement, we can mitigate the risk of dropping out. This article describes the history of school dropout, predictors of…

President Obama announced a plan to spend an unprecedented $12-billion over 10 years to improve programs, courses, and facilities at community colleges. The money, the president said, will position two-year institutions to produce five million more graduates over the next decade and to play a leading role in rebuilding the economy. But after the…

In this short discussion article I develop some earlier writing on the theme of education, improvement and sustainability (see references). It builds upon my primary criticism of the school improvement movement that it is accustomed to thinking of education as good in and of itself. As David Orr suggests candidly in his essay in the early 1990s,…