The UChicago Consortium, Network for College Success, and the To&Through Project's new paper, "Practice-Driven Data: Lessons from Chicago's Approach to Research, Data, and Practice in Education," shares key lessons learned from Chicago's approach to using data to foster ongoing improvement in students' educational attainment. This…

P.S. 52 Sheepshead Bay School in Brooklyn, New York, serves more than 850 students from pre-kindergarten to fifth grade from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. After scores on the 2014 New York State English language arts assessment were unsatisfactory, first-year principal Rafael Alvarez searched for a way to improve academic outcomes for his…

Part of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education (SCOPE) research series titled "Teachers' Time: Collaborating for Learning, Teaching, and Leading," this case study looks at Hillsdale High School, a large, comprehensive high school located in San Mateo, California, a high-tech enclave of Silicon Valley nestled 23 miles…

A state-sponsored pilot program is allowing the faculty at two North Carolina schools to experiment with school reform. Lead teachers serve as instructional leaders and coordinate teachers' efforts to develop class schedules, plan and organize inservice training, and analyze test scores. (MLF)

Findings from "Getting There from Here," a yearlong study of effective school leadership in 10 districts in 5 states, identify some of the problems that get in the way of effective school leadership. Offers nine practices that boards and superintendents can use to work together to achieve district goals. (MLF)

Teachers, superintendents, principals, and school board members in a number of Pennsylvania districts have come up with positive solutions to deal with challenges facing public schools. Although the problems they were faced with differed, educators found that by working together for a common goal in school cooperation committees, they could arrive…

The Clarksville/Montgomery County (Tennessee) Board of Education has created a school-board contract that defines how the members will work together. (MLF)

Offers practices on fostering school board teamwork and effectiveness: (1) establish a code of behavior; (2) enforce the code; (3) make sure the code is up-to-date; (4) define the roles and duties of the board president, vice president, and secretary; and (5) establish some goals and a way to assess progress. (MLF)

A school board member and a superintendent realized in their three years of working together in a Florida school district how crucial the board/superintendent relationship is to a smoothly running school district. Advises board members and superintendents to keep their roles straight and to work as a team. Offers guidelines to board presidents.…

An Indiana school board achieves success in site-based management by fair consideration of decisions made by school planning teams. Advises boards contemplating school-based management to (1) be a team player; (2) develop trust; (3) not bend to interest groups; (4) have patience; (5) set criteria for proposals; and (6) grant waivers to district…

Offers a practical review of commonsense principles that may assist a school business official in preparing for negotiations. Includes the role of the team, preparation for negotiations, process at the table, and settlement issues. (MLF)