Over the next few weeks, dozens of schools will open across New Orleans for the second full academic year since Hurricane Katrina. As many as 33,000 children are expected to report to one of the campuses in the city's patchwork of charter and traditional public schools. Unlike last fall--when many schools opened without textbooks, functioning…

The paper's aim is to demonstrate the utility of the well-known Nim game when it is used as a tool in teaching the binary system. A way to increase student comprehension, it also forms a basis for student projects and extracurricular activities on the topic. The paper offers descriptions of two versions of the game and the underlying mathematical…

Using data from Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count, this issue of "Data Notes" highlights some of the differences that exist between states. In addition to Achieving the Dream data, this report includes data from the U.S. Department of Education's Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) for the 2008-09 academic year to…

Developing school leaders who are equipped with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed to effectively lead low-performing schools has become a critical goal for local school districts intent on dramatically improving student outcomes. Given the current criticism surrounding leadership preparation programs and the changing nature of school…

The Buffalo Public Schools have made important strides since the somber days in 2000 when the Council of the Great City Schools concluded that the school district was at a crossroads. The school board and then-superintendent Marion Canedo laid important groundwork for the necessary instructional reforms that were to follow. The school board and…

In fall 2009, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project to develop and test multiple measures of teacher effectiveness. The goal of the MET project is to improve the quality of information about teaching effectiveness available to education professionals within states and districts--information…

The purpose of this study was to determine if the National Board Teacher Certification (NBTC) process was an effective form of professional development for teachers that would result in changing teachers' instructional practice resulting in improved student learning. The study also examined how a cohort of NBTC candidates impacted the non-NBTC…

Many educators and researchers have proposed reforms for dealing with the ongoing adolescent literacy crisis. Progress in strengthening young people's literacy now depends on schools a) choosing appropriate programs and b) implementing them consistently and effectively. Yet the history of school reform is littered with reforms that were adopted…

As a starting point for the Strategic School Funding for Results (SSFR) project, the AIR/PLP (American Institutes for Research/Pivot Learning Partners) team developed a series of protocols to conduct interviews and focus groups with district administrators and school principals. The purpose of these interviews and focus groups was to gain an…

In North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), one of the German states, catchment areas for part-time vocational schools were abolished in 2008. With the intention to foster competition between schools in order to improve school quality, training companies now may freely choose the school of their choice. NRW is the first German state to take this step. In the…

A school improvement program that provided support to poor-performing schools on the basis of needs identified in a school improvement plan was implemented in 72 government schools in Jamaica, from 1998 to 2005. In this independent evaluation of the program, we use propensity score matching to create, post hoc, a control group of schools that were…

In 1988, Research for Better Schools (RBS) proposed the development of state-specific rural assistance councils (RAC) in Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania to assist in strengthening rural school-community partnerships and in planning rural school improvement. This report summarizes the activities of each of the four RACs during…

This guide for school improvement uses as its foundation the Concerns-Based Adoption Model which describes the changing feelings of individuals as they learn about, prepare for, use, and refine new practices. Seven linear steps are depicted as they relate to the school improvement process: (1) establishing the school improvement project: (2)…

In response to recommendations by a task force on teaching and teacher education, the state of Wisconsin established the Teacher Incentives Pilot Program. The goal of the program is to plan, develop, and administer a series of pilot projects which model different types of incentives designed to attract, prepare, and retain competent teachers.…

This paper explores an innovative approach to funding school improvement programs. It looks at a series of programs initiated by the National College of Education in collaboration with several corporations and foundations in the Chicago metropolitan area. The evolution of the College's participation in these endeavors is reported as well as the…