Charter schools--what was their original promise? They would enroll diverse groups of students. They would give teachers the room and power to innovate. They would be educational laboratories that would find new ways to reach students, and they would share those lessons with other public schools. But charter schools haven't lived up to their…

The principle of schools collaborating to improve is one that has seen growing interest in recent years, and there is emerging evidence that in particular collaboration between high and lower performing schools can be an effective school improvement method. However, this evidence relates primarily to secondary schools, and little research has been…

Nigerian educators are concerned about the need to improve learners' academic achievement in core subject areas (mathematics, English language, science, and social studies). Research, however, appears not to have focused on children who attended private primary schools in which other subjects are taught. This gap is what this study sought to…

This publication outlines the fundamental principles and process of Strategic School Design. Through more than a decade of research and practice in the area of school resource use, we have found that high-performing schools are responding to the changing context in education by using people, time, technology, and money in ways that look…

Student achievement is inconsistent when comparing subgroups of students in public schools (Finn, 1999; Spellings, 2008; Teale, Paciga, & Hoffman, 2007). According to research, effective school principals believe that the problem is internal and subject to their control to effect change by addressing inequities. The changes required in closing…

Within the context of schools, it can be argued that trust is a complex absolute necessity if students are to be successful learners; if educators are to be successful facilitators and champions of learning; if the staff is to be successful providers of educational support; if parents, guardians, and families are to be successful partners with the…

The purpose of the present study is to analyze stakeholder theory and its applicability to community college accountability. Community colleges have been using strategic planning as a management approach that includes the process of strategic action, and many organizations claim that they collaborate with their stakeholders during this process.…

From the Center on Reinventing Public Education's (CRPE's) work examining the efforts to close schools over the past 10 years, in cities of all sizes, two glaring facts stand out: Most city and district leaders are surprised at how difficult it is to close schools. And many of these leaders make mistakes that others before them have learned to…

This article reports on a study on publicly run schools in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago which has found that, while single-sex schools may benefit female students who prefer a single-sex environment, they are not inherently beneficial for boys or most girls. While the findings are based on data from one Caribbean nation, experts say they…

This paper aims to address conceptual and methodological challenges of doing research in the field of inclusive education and revisit school effectiveness research literature to inform future research. First, we present the rationale for inclusive education and briefly review the evolution of special needs education. Then, we discuss limitations…

In spring 2013, the Washington Center administered a national survey to find what campuses assessed when they assessed their learning community programs, how they assessed those outcomes, and what they did with the results. Sixty-six campuses responded to the survey. Most campuses assess at least one measure of student success (pass rates, course…

A programme of resources and activities relating to "Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning" (SEAL) has been rolled out nationally to primary and secondary schools in the UK, but we know little about how variations in the implementation of this work relate to key indicators of school success. In the present study, a team of experienced…

This article focuses on the use of a value-added approach for promoting school improvement. It presents yearly value-added estimates, analyses their stability over time, and discusses the contribution of this methodological approach for promoting school improvement programmes in the Portuguese system of evaluation. The value-added model is applied…

Over the last 4 decades, the school effectiveness and school improvement research bases have gained prominence and recognition on the international stage. In both a theoretical and empirical sense, they have matured through a wide range of well-documented projects, interventions, and innovations across a range of countries, describing how efforts…

School voucher programs challenge the traditional role of the public school as the builder of citizens, raising the question of whether private schools can provide a civic education of equal quality. In this study, we use survey data from the Milwaukee voucher program to investigate the relative benefits in civic outcomes of attending a voucher…