One year after the COVID-19 pandemic forced state and school leaders across the nation and around the world to immediately close school buildings, the lasting impact on students is increasingly evident: Months of online learning and limited in-person interaction with educators, coaches and mentors have led to gaps in learning, and unknown…

On April 3, 2017, sixteen states (Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Tennessee, and Vermont) and the District of Columbia submitted their Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) state accountability plans to either the US Department of…

Change swept throughout the country with the 2018 elections, bringing 20 new governors into office. Whether returning or starting their first term, governors are taking the opportunity in their State of the State addresses to highlight achievements and outline plans for the future. Every governor who has given an address has mentioned an…

A governor's State of the State address is an opportunity to outline policy priorities, highlight past accomplishments and reflect on the condition of the state and country. In 2018, 17 governors are serving their last year in office, having reached the end of their term or deciding not to seek re-election. Many of them used their State of the…

In the fall of 2015, Jonathan Howland interviewed about a dozen independent school heads to inquire about novel programs and developments in their schools that, if they take root and flourish, could be "game changing"; about their vision of independent schools 40 years hence, in mid-21st-century America; and about impediments to reaching…

How can States address the continual and extraordinary challenge of sustaining and adapting the reforms they have implemented to improve student outcomes? What steps can States take to do so in the face of inevitably evolving conditions--such as a change in resources (for example, the end of a grant), leadership (a transition in personnel or…

Reforms of the scope and scale of those being undertaken by States today require the development of strong leaders at all levels of organizations to manage the change required by these and other initiatives. State education agencies (SEAs) can use this competency framework and accompanying exercise guide to build the skills, knowledge and…

This brief provides an overview of the Instructional Improvement System (IIS) models for State education agencies in Hawaii, Kentucky, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Ohio and Rhode Island, along IIS goals in the following areas: (1) Standards and Curriculum; (2) Instructional Practices; (3) Assessment and Growth; (4) Learner Profiles; (5) Data…

This report describes the use of Lead Turnaround Partners (LTPs) in the current School Improvement Grant (SIG) program and provides the results of document review, surveys, and interviews with eight State Education Agencies and seven Lead Turnaround Partner organizations. The study focuses on the implementation of the transformation and turnaround…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to identify significant external and internal challenges that state organization leaders face in promoting science-based teen pregnancy prevention programs within their states. The state organization administrators were chosen because their organizations were funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control…

Few would argue against the idea of planning and implementing improvements to the nation's schools. This report contends, school improvement planning processes have frequently not been conceived in ways likely to produce desired learning outcomes for many students. The analyses presented in this report focus on a lack of attention to how schools…