This article presents an interview with Wes Taylor, the 2011 MetLife/NASSP National High School Principal of the Year. In this interview, Taylor shares credit with the teachers and staff members at Lowndes High School in Valdosta, Georgia, for the school's systemic and long-lasting improvement in instruction and climate. He mentions that the…

The study examined the efficacy of an early intervention program to improve children's sequential time perception through virtual versus pictorial training in arranging episodes of temporal scripts. The researchers examined 65 deaf and hard of hearing children ages 4-7 years who were divided into two groups: (a) virtual environments technological…

Reading and understanding texts of all kinds form a basic competence for participating in social and cultural life and for being successful on a job. Although most European adolescents have adequate reading competences at their disposal by the end of school, about a quarter of them cannot meet the minimal standards. The urgency of this societal…

Starting in the 1970s, Brazil developed a very complex system of quantitative assessments of education at all levels, making extensive use of statistical information and tests, in an effort to improve and maintain the quality of its education. However, with some exceptions, particularly at the graduate level, Brazilian education standards remain…

Given growing interest in accountability and outcomes, the North Central Association's Higher Learning Commission developed a new path for accreditation, the Academic Quality Improvement Program (AQIP). The goal is to infuse continuous improvement and quality in the culture of higher education, and to blend traditional accreditation with the…

Participatory evaluation tools have been shown to be effective for program development in various settings, including in higher education. Taking student perspectives into consideration is key for graduate program development, particularly in interdisciplinary programs. The current study utilizes Group Level Assessment (GLA), a participatory…

A key goal of school choice policies is to generate competition between schools, which should theoretically drive school leaders to improve their programs to attract and retain students. However, few studies examine how principals actually perceive and define competition. This article empirically examines school leaders' conceptions of competition…

We argue that teacher preparation programs considering approaches to assess teaching quality should choose measures that appropriately represent the complexity of teaching, have formative value in supporting teacher candidates develop as highly qualified teachers and consider the context, mission, and people that the program desires to serve. The…

It is widely understood that distinctive leadership programs must engage in assessment, and intentional program improvement practices. Design thinking can serve as one student-centered tool that engages students in the assessment process, while looping feedback into substantive programmatic changes. This paper explores the use of this innovative…

Leaders of higher education need practical solutions to engaging in program improvement, providing student supports, and fortifying partnerships with collaborators. Compounding these needs are the heightened demands thrust upon faculty to advise students online, reconfigure in-person courses to hybrid and online models, and attend to their…

The Mastery-based Learning (MBL) Work Group has examined opportunities to increase student access to relevant and robust mastery-based academic pathways aligned to personal career goals and postsecondary education, and reviewed the role of the High School and Beyond Plan (HSBP) in supporting mastery-based learning. The Work Group members believe…

Schools are experiencing unprecedented disruption, forcing educators to think differently about how they engage with their students and forcing changes to longstanding systems that have been established to deliver education. This presents an opportunity to not only discover ways to address education during the coronavirus pandemic, but also to…

Despite the link between school-lunch participation and student health, only half of adolescents with the program in their schools participate on a given day. A multi-pronged school lunch promotion intervention was implemented in middle and high schools in an urban, low-income school district to improve school lunch participation and reduce food…

The purpose of this evaluation was to understand how a literacy program based on 21st-century learning skills and social emotional learning was implemented and if it exemplified the 21st-Century Classroom Learning Community Framework. The results were used to learn how to improve the implementation of the Collaborative Literacy. Results were also…

Background: Obesity is a complex health problem affecting more than one-third of school-aged youth. The increasing obesity rates in Kansas and Missouri has been particularly concerning, with efforts being made to improve student health through the implementation of school wellness policies (SWPs). The primary purpose of this study was to conduct a…