There are 339 schools in Texas that are struggling, defined as "improvement required" by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) (txschools.gov, 2018) and received a "F" rating due to low academic performance. This designation is earned through a formula that measures general student achievement, school progress based on a comparison…

When the National Standards and Benchmarks for Effective Catholic Schools (NSBECS) were first developed, principal and superintendent of Catholic schools in the Diocese of Grand Rapids, Michigan, David Faber writes in this article of his elation at the possibilities for measuring quality and for addressing total school improvement that the…

The provision of quality basic education is essential as it can ensure that all learners have an equal opportunity to succeed in life. This paper discusses district officials' perspectives regarding some factors that impede the achievement of quality basic education in schools under their jurisdiction. Data were collected through semi-structured…

The winner of the 2018 Pozen Prize for Innovative Schools-- the Edward M. Kennedy Academy for Health Careers (EMK) in Boston-- seeks to empower underrepresented students to succeed in college and high-wage careers. With an emphasis on healthcare-related career exposure and experiential learning, the school places a deliberate focus on preparing…

This paper establishes that system-generated data profiles are influencing the work of principals in three Queensland state schools. Drawing upon Foucault's notions of governance, as well as research emphasising performative cultures and the importance placed upon numbers and data in education, this paper uses the tale of the Emperor's map as a…

Utilizing capital as a construct to analyze leadership that triggers school transformation is a newly emerged perspective. This study employed the capital theory as the framework to explore how schools undertook the transformative tasks by multi-case study. Three secondary schools in Taiwan were recruited to investigate how leaders constructed the…

The purposes of this research were to study the factors of effectiveness management model for subdistrict secondary school, to investigate current situations and desirable situations of effectiveness management model for sub-district secondary school, to develop the effectiveness management model for sub-district secondary school and to study the…

Elsewhere, the authors have unpacked instructional leadership and have documented that such leadership is associated with more effective schools. Indeed, there has been for a considerable time nearly universal acceptance that learning-centered leadership should provide the central platform on which leadership is enacted. In this paper, a less…

Policy makers are challenged to improve educational outcomes, manage scarce resources and secure public acceptance of their initiatives to provide quality, relevant and effective education. In making decisions they are pulled between competing ideologies about the process and purposes of schooling. This paper explores these ideologies and suggests…

Background: Virtual schools--free, state-funded, credit-awarding elementary and secondary schools offering curricula and programs exclusively online--are a rapidly expanding sector of U.S. education. Some of the largest of these schools have low graduation rates and receive "failing" rankings on state accountability metrics. They…

Describing the variation in test scores between and within school districts is critical for: (1) for policy-related and descriptive work that investigates the sorting of students among districts and the differential effectiveness of those districts; and (2) for methodological work planning future experiments or interventions. Intraclass…

Nearly 30 states have adopted or are transitioning to performance-based funding programs for community colleges that allocate funding based on institutional performance according to defined metrics. While embraced by state lawmakers and promoted by outside advocacy groups as a method to improve student outcomes, enhance accountability and ensure…

This article explores how a formal state examination system operates as a tool which enables the cultural reproduction of the middle classes in an increasingly market-driven education system in Ireland. It is based on a study of a group of final-year girls approaching the high-stakes terminal Leaving Certificate examination. The success of this…

It is well documented that classroom observation reports are used by school leaders as just one piece of the clinical supervision process of teachers (Cohen and Goldhaber, 2016). While the frequency of classroom observations might vary between school districts, recent regulations on Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) have added more…

Scarce human and fiscal resources of high value are spent in the field of education. Thus, the concept of efficiency, and particularly technical efficiency, that refers to the maximization of outputs at a given set of inputs, can be a possible contribution to the design of education policy and administration; mostly at a time of economic crisis as…