The passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), also known as the economic stimulus package, provided an extra $3 billion for school improvement grants (SIGs) under section 1003(g) of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Along with this funding increase, the U.S. Department of Education issued guidance…

This article describes a new paradigm for accountability that envisions afterschool programs as learning organizations continually engaged in improving quality. Nearly 20 years into the era of results-based accountability, a new generation of afterschool accountability systems is emerging. Rather than aiming to test whether programs have produced…

Kansas City (Missouri) Public Schools is at a crossroads. The district has struggled for decades with poor academic achievement, dwindling enrollment and budget, and short-term superintendents--27 in the past 40 years. Most recently, after a two-year stint during which he helped the district get its financial house in order, closing nearly half of…

Over the past decade, human performance technology (HPT) has become an important source of rigor and application in support of best practices in capacity development. HPT shares common principles with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development best practices. This article explores HPT's critical role as the methodology of choice…

The reluctance to design and teach online courses in higher education is often attributed to technology anxiety in faculty. This article documents a faculty development model that has successfully helped faculty overcome this obstacle. "Bootcamps," faculty development programs held at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI, were specifically and…

Initiatives such as Response to Intervention (RTI) and the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts (CCSS-ELA) have the potential to positively impact progress toward the goal of literacy for all. Because the CCSS-ELA will guide the content of the curriculum, instruction and assessment in the large number of adopting states, they will…

For many years, England has been the epitome of high-stakes accountability, often playing leapfrog with the USA. It represents an extreme of centralized surveillance, with schools organized as a quasi-market and supervised through a punitive combination of external inspection, the use of test data to name and shame schools, and ultimately closure…

Healthcare has become a rapidly changing field. With the introduction of value-based purchasing to determine reimbursement of Medicare providers based on the quality of care in addition to outcomes in treatment, the environment is becoming ever more competitive. Saint Philip's Hospital is among the largest non-profit hospitals in the nation…

Underrepresented high school students must be effectively prepared for postsecondary education. Ensuring that all students graduate from high school college-ready is requiring educators to rethink traditional programming in an attempt to better meet the needs of all students. Therefore, the utilization of college preparation programs such as…

Over the last 20 years, state education agencies (SEAs) have been given considerably more responsibilities for directing and guiding the improvement of low-performing schools. At the same time, federal policies strongly pressed SEAs to use research to design these supports. Very few studies have explored the SEA as an organization, or its role in…

When students are able to cope with, manage and maneuver the social and emotional landscapes of their lives, their ability to learn on all levels improves. Teaching Social / Emotional Learning (SEL), as a component of secondary education, not only increases academic performance, but prepares students to meet the challenges of lifelong learning in…

Could the labour market gender balance be improved by introducing new types of apprenticeship-trained workers? This article investigates what happened in the wake of the Norwegian VET programme for health and social care, a new approach introduced via the 1994 educational reform. By upgrading this traditionally female-dominated area of education,…

Building Assets Reducing Risks (BARR) is a social emotional model that achieves academic outcomes through combining use of real-time student data with proven relationship-building strategies and intensive teacher collaboration to prevent course failure. BARR is a recipient of US Department of Education "Investing in Innovation (i3)"…

The following profiles address how the state departments of education are helping educators prepare for and implement their states' new college- and career-readiness standards and aligned assessments, through professional learning. SREB researchers examined each state's major professional development efforts around its new standards in order to…

When a one-class-at-a-time approach can't address a pervasive discipline problem, you need this book to implement a schoolwide solution. In this follow-up to "The Educator's Guide to Preventing and Solving Discipline Problems", the authors provide you with a research-based model to help your school: (1) Build positive relationships with students;…