As a result of the frustration with the dominant "What Works" paradigm of large-scale research-based improvement, practitioners, researchers, foundations, and policymakers are increasingly embracing a set of ideas and practices that can be collectively labeled continuous improvement (CI) methods. This chapter provides a comparative…

Global criticism on the quality of initial teacher education has led to calls for reform. One initiative that emerged in Australia was the establishment of Hub School partnerships, which facilitate collaborations between schools and universities to explore how initial teacher education could be improved. This paper reports one such partnership,…

This paper reports on the external evaluation of a two-year project aimed at improving educational opportunities for Aboriginal Education Workers (AEWs) through technology-based pedagogy. A design-based approach was selected by the research team to increase the relevance of the research for both praxis and practice, with emphasis on improvement of…

The Shelby County iZone is a district-led effort to dramatically improve, or "turn around," 23 of the lowest performing schools in Tennessee in the 15th largest district in the country. Despite circumstances that have derailed many past reforms, iZone schools have made statistically significant and educationally meaningful gains in…

This report summarizes the deliberations and recommendations of the California Advisory Task Force on Alternative Schools (Task Force). The Task Force is a public service project of the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and their Communities at Stanford University and is convened in collaboration with the California Department of Education (CDE). A…

This toolkit is designed to help school- and district-based practitioners engage in a continuous improvement effort. It provides an overview of continuous improvement and focuses on the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle. It includes tools and resources that practitioners can use to implement a continuous improvement effort in their own schools, districts,…

Like California, South Korea's system of higher education is a work in progress. Each must evolve and reshape themselves at various points in their histories in their quest for relevancy and, increasingly, to external pressures and demands of governments and, more generally, society. Utilizing California's pioneering higher education system as a…

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) with its research partner have developed a system that changes the equation on monitoring. The research-driven approach to monitoring allows DESE, within its existing activities and resources, to use monitoring to improve the state system of support as well as direct…

Low-performing schools are attracting attention in many countries that are looking for ways to turn them around. According to the functional-structural approach, restructuring these schools' organization is imperative, and an organizational consultant can help in this task. In this study, we investigated the perspectives of organizational…

This mixed-methods study identified the effective practices of the principal and leadership team in an Improvement-Required (IR) high school that significantly influenced student achievement and guided their school from IR to a rating of Met Standard in one year. IR or F schools under the new system are schools that failed to meet the state…

There was a lack of empirical narratives from principals, and in particular, secondary principals in Texas, about the critical conditions and leadership modes within the 2019 Effective School Framework (ESF) designed by the Texas Education Agency. The purpose of this narrative inquiry was to understand how secondary principals seeking to improve…

Philanthropic organizations are experimenting with ways to support capacity building in order to scale innovations and leverage funding for greater social impact. Increasingly, philanthropies are also attending to their own organizational needs for learning in order to inform strategy, shape future work, and measure effectiveness. This article…

Under waivers to the No Child Left Behind Act, the federal government required states to identify schools where targeted subgroups of students have the lowest achievement and to implement reforms in these "Focus Schools." In this study, we examine the Focus School reforms in the state of Kentucky. The reforms in this state are uniquely…

With 15 months left before the September 2024 obligation deadline, AASA, The School Superintendents Association, launched its fourth American Rescue Plan (ARP) survey of school district leaders to ascertain what spending priorities and challenges they are anticipating as the fiscal timeline tightens. This 2023 survey administered in June 2023…

Dialogical self theory is applied to describe the identity of a group of experienced Catalan teachers. Participants (N = 58) were asked about their positions and I-positions via a written survey, and the data were analysed using qualitative and quantitative procedures. The findings show a comprehensive description of nine types of positions…