The national track record for state-to-district assistance is not stellar. It is tactics in the absence of strategy and activities in the absence of accomplishment. The problem is systemic: State departments need to transform their organizational structures to facilitate rather than hinder effective assistance strategies. The starting place is…

State education agencies, or SEAs, are being asked-and in some cases, forced-to make operational changes in the name of school improvement. New laws and expectations are pushing them to play a greater role in managing school performance, displacing to a significant degree their decades-old responsibility for monitoring local school districts for…

Since their inception, all schools of the Sacred Heart have been headed by nuns of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Jesus [RSCJ]. As the years have passed, many RSCJ nuns have aged and retired leaving vacancies that have proven difficult to fill. In this qualitative study, the characteristics, commonalities, and personal motivations of Sacred…

Many state departments of education have revised their state school counseling models to reflect the ASCA National Model for school counseling programs. Only a few states have developed statewide evaluation systems to gather information about program effectiveness and/or to promote effective local program evaluation. This qualitative study…

It has been three years since Race to the Top grant-winning states piloted new teacher evaluation systems and many of them have made considerable progress, yet according to media coverage and a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report published in April 2015, struggles remain and most grantees have asked to extend the timetables for…

An individual student's educational experience often includes multiple transitions: progressing through K12 school levels, transitioning to postsecondary education or the workforce, and sometimes changing schools. It is important for both the student and the school systems that course information be easily understood and transferrable through each…

"The SEA of the Future" is an education publication series examining how state education agencies can shift from a compliance to a performance-oriented organization through strategic planning and performance management tools to meet growing demands to support education reform while improving productivity. This volume, the sixth in the…

The impetus for this report is new evidence that state department of education work to align instruction with standards may make a difference for teachers' practices and understanding about their state standards. Using data from the RAND American Teacher Panel, the authors found that Louisiana teachers were more likely than other teachers to…

Many of the policy documents and much of the recent literature talk about "leadership" when discussing the role of headteachers and principals of schools. The word is also used when writing about other senior and middle managers. It is a way of showing the difference between what used to be expected of headteachers and what is expected…

This paper presents the results of a study that examined the effects of using an action research process to explore science teachers' views on science literacy as well as improve collaboration among department members. Data were collected by documenting the action research process and interviewing teachers at a suburban K-12 school in Southern…

What does it take to transform a large, bureaucratic institution with a fractured culture and a compliance orientation into a nurturing, collaborative, vision-directed organization? This report and the accompanying research brief endeavor to answer that question by examining a humanistic and systems thinking approach to cultural change that took…

In our 2019 annual report, we provide insight into our sponsorship work during the year and the performance of our sponsored schools. We are also pleased to highlight the good work of our colleagues on Fordham's policy and research teams. Our schools' academic performance shows several schools doing very well on Ohio's value added (growth) measure…

Data are more than just test scores, and by effectively accessing and using different types of data--such as attendance, grades, and course-taking--teachers, parents, and school and district leaders can help ensure that every student is on a path for success every day, not just at the end of the school year. The 10 State Actions to Ensure…

When the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were adopted in many states, it was only one piece of the pie called Race to the Top (RttT). As states competed and clamored to win the Race to the Top dollars, they knew it came with strings attached. The biggest piece of string is called APPR, or Annual Professional Performance Review--and it is more…

"The SEA of the Future" is an education publication series examining how state education agencies can shift from a compliance to a performance-oriented organization through strategic planning and performance management tools to meet growing demands to support education reform while improving productivity. This volume, the second in the…