This report presents an innovative approach for higher education institutions to better support students from diverse backgrounds. It explores how colleges and universities can fulfill a student success agenda through the creation of a diverse infrastructure that enables the overall institution to effectively mobilize to serve diverse student…

State reforms and philanthropic investments seeking to improve public education in California have made substantial changes in recent years--from what students learn and how they learn it to how schools are funded and evaluated. Most efforts have focused on one level at a time, either K-12 schools, community colleges, or four-year postsecondary…

Late in 2018, the California Department of Education rolled out an updated version of the California School Dashboard. This revision altered the look and feel of the Dashboard and added new indicators based on newly available data. This brief updates a 2018 analysis of the Dashboard. First, I examine whether the state's revisions are in line with…

Leaders, policymakers, and systems developers seek to improve early childhood programs through data driven decision-making. Data can be useful for informing continuous quality improvement efforts at the classroom and program level and for creating support for workforce development at the system level. Early childhood program leaders use…

Throughout every region of North Carolina, leaders of organizations in all fields -- business, education, government, community, faith-based, and others -- agree that the future prosperity and well-being of the state's citizens requires successfully educating all of its children. That means effectively supporting children of every race and…

In 2009, a seldom-used policy lever emerged in the form of a competitive grant program, Race to the Top (RTTT), and sparked a flurry of state-led initiatives as states vied for federal dollars. The current study examines the policymaking context that surrounded these events and propelled Tennessee to the top of the race among the states. Through…

Public education reformers have created a widespread expectation of school choice among school consumers. School leaders adopt rigorous academic programs, like the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme (DP) and Career Programme (CP), to improve their market position in the competitive landscape. While ample research has investigated…

Background: Data-based decision-making (DBDM) and research-informed teaching practice (RITP) are key to teacher and school improvement. Currently, however, DBDM and RITP represent two distinct approaches to developing evidence-informed practice (EIP) and do not correspond to the all-encompassing notion of EIP envisaged by many academics and…

Charter schools and school districts have been at odds since the first charter school law passed in 1991. Districts resent the competition and subsequent funding loss for traditional schools. Charters resent the lack of access to facilities and other resources and attempts to infringe on their autonomy. Yet a fast-growing number of school…

The General Secretariat for Lifelong Learning and Youth (GSLLLY), the strategic national entity for Adult Education in Greece, has designed and implemented various e-learning courses offering flexibility beyond time and space restrictions. The courses run in two consecutive periods, the first one from 2008 to 2011 and the second one from 2014 to…

Sometimes teachers just have to go for it. Breathe and expect the unexpected. A leap of faith can be quite liberating, especially for a new Headteacher of a "Requires Improvement" school. Watching staff and children work tirelessly to improve, the author realised that teachers had to be risk takers, problem-solvers and learners, just as…

Strong school accountability systems can be a powerful tool for sending a clear message that achievement of all groups of students matters and that to be considered good, a school must serve all groups of students well. But in recent years, many states put in place accountability systems that mask disparities in opportunity and achievement rather…

This Introduction provides an overview of the distinctive contribution of the late David Raffe to educational research in the UK and internationally over a 40-year period. His wide-ranging research on post-compulsory education and training systems was enriched by the development of conceptual distinctions that have become part of the lingua franca…

Research addressing the effects of cohort size on student success in asynchronous online discussions is sparse. As such, the following study attempted to determine an optimal student cohort size to enhance success and engagement within online discussions in general education courses at a large post-secondary university consisting of predominately…

Purpose: This paper is one of seven in this volume elaborating upon different approaches to quality improvement in education. This paper aims to delineate a methodology called Implementation Science, focusing on methods to enhance the reach, adoption, use and maintenance of innovations and discoveries in diverse education contexts.…