The purpose of this phenomenological study was to examine the influence of high stakes testing on high poverty and low performing middle school campuses in a Texas Education Service Center as perceived by middle school campus principals. Participants of the study consisted of 10 middle school principals who have served on a low performing and high…

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

This article explores ways to improve the use and usefulness of four large and independently developed U.S. Education Department (ED) school-based data collections: the annual EDFacts' student outcomes on state assessments and high school graduation rates; the annual Common Core of Data's student and teacher counts and district and state finances;…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the influence of teacher leadership on the enactment of educational reforms in southeastern China. It considers how the work of middle and teacher leaders in schools is structured to support reform enactment at the school level. Design/methodology/approach: The research was conducted in three case…

In 2008 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development presented system leadership (leadership beyond a single institution) as more effective than traditional approaches to public services delivery in responding to the external drivers of globalisation, new technologies and increasing societal complexity. This paper reports the…

In contrast to prior federally mandated school reforms, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) allows states more discretion in reforming their lowest performing schools, removes requirements to disrupt the status quo, and does not allocate substantial additional funds. Using a regression discontinuity design, we evaluate a state turnaround…

This dissertation examines the role that external factors play in students' educational attainment and success. The first two chapters examine the role of school quality. Chapter 1 examines how the timing of school quality impacts human capital formation, and Chapter 2 examines whether schools provide equal quality to all students within the…

In 2008, a diverse group of New York City leaders--including representatives from the NYC Department of Education, the teacher and administrator unions, the philanthropic and business communities, and New York University--came together to establish the Research Alliance for New York City Schools. Since that time, the Research Alliance has worked…

Not much that state boards of education will undertake is harder than transforming low-performing high schools. Yet what they do is pivotal. State board members should keep 10 key principles in mind when they are working to transform low-performing high schools. These 10 key principles are presented in this article: (1) The school is the unit of…

Background: UK government policy views collaboration with outstanding schools as a way of helping apparently less successful schools to close the attainment gap. However, there has been little debate about criteria for defining a school's success or failure. Moreover it is unclear which aspects of outstanding schools could readily transfer to…

The world needs great individual educational changemakers capable of identifying problems and creating bold, scalable solutions. But the world also needs Dream Teams--groups of talented administrators, teachers, staff, students, and community members who are passionate about making things better for kids, believe that school-based change is the…

Since creating the first comprehensive study of school dropouts in Texas in 1985-86, the Intercultural Development Research Association (IDRA) has conducted attrition analyses to assess schools' abilities to hold on to their students until they graduate. This year's study is the 33rd in a series of annual reports on trends in dropout and attrition…

Many organizations have a tendency toward misalignment of "authority," "responsibility," and "accountability" that causes poor decision-making. There are natural consequences that result, similar to touching fire and getting burned. When those key elements are not properly aligned, the organization can experience…

In England, alternative education (AE) is offered to young people formally excluded from school, close to formal exclusion or who have been informally pushed to the educational edges of their local school. Their behaviour is seen as needing to change. In this paper, we examine the behavioural regimes at work in 11 AE programmes. Contrary to…

The purpose of this study was to find out which corrective actions have a positive impact on improving students' learning and achievement and ultimately moving underperforming elementary schools out of Program Improvement (PI) status in California. Some common corrective actions include, but are not limited to, instructional program, instructional…