This research focuses on leadership decisions by high school administrators in Maine in response to school closures and subsequent reopening plans due the Covid-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study was to learn the degree to which adaptive leadership was used as a leadership approach in response to a unique, complex and dynamic set of…

Across the country schools have continuously looked to find ways to increase student achievement. In response to state and federal policy, school districts have used evaluative processes and accountability measures to increase teacher effectiveness. Despite a significant body of research that supports the effect of supervisory practices on teacher…

In summer 2020, the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), with support from the Barr Foundation, began observing and learning from students, parents, and educators in New England high schools as they navigated the uncertainty of the pandemic. The authors wanted to see what challenges and opportunities they faced, the ways in which they…

The team at Nokomis Regional High School in Newport, Maine, has spent over a decade laying the groundwork for multifaceted reforms--including interdisciplinary curriculum, project-based learning, education outside of the classroom walls, and meaningful career exploration--all of which are student-centered and aim to deepen rigorous academics into…

The use of large, open-source data sets is ubiquitous in scientific research. Scientists--ranging from meteorologists to chemists to epidemiologists--are researching and investigating critical questions using data that they have not themselves collected. To contribute to the growing effort to bring data science into classrooms, the authors have…

Despite decades of research that points to the importance of family and staff engagement, the average school district in the United States is not designed to empower families and teachers to shape school improvement. The COVID-19 pandemic offers an opportunity to change that. Pandemic-fueled disruption helped seed ideas with families and educators…

The COVID-19 challenge found many instructors in unchartered territory. While some had experience in planning flipped or blended lessons, switching to 100% online instruction was unfamiliar. Many educators faced the problems of too many resources to sift through and too little time to master them before beginning online instruction. While numerous…

Public Law 2015, Chapter 261 created the Public Higher Education Systems Coordinating Committee to recognize more formally the importance of cooperative efforts between Maine's two public systems of higher education. The Committee is comprised of the Chancellor of the University of Maine System (UMS), the President of the Maine Community College…

Secondary schools in Maine and New Hampshire have been involved in a citizen science program called "All About Arsenic" aimed at addressing arsenic contamination of well water, one of the most pressing public health issues in both states. Nearly half of the population of Maine and New Hampshire derive their drinking water from private…

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the implementation and impacts of the Building Assets, Reducing Risks (BARR) model in its first year of implementation in 66 schools across the U.S. and to document scale-up progress during the Investing in Innovation (i3) grant period (2017-2021). The impact evaluation included 21,529 9th grade students…