School leaders who have used the Making Schools Work design to improve student achievement credit the use of teacher-led focus teams that involve teachers and school and district leaders in working together to ensure that key school and classroom practices form the foundation for school improvement. This guide offers an overview of SREB's approach…

You are a school administrator--a principal or maybe a district leader. You're doing everything "right"--poring over data, trying new strategies, launching annual initiatives, bringing in outside trainers. So why do the outcomes you seek still seem so far away? The problem isn't you; it's that you were trained in school leadership, and…

Providing foundational academic support to Indiana's culturally and linguistically diverse students is a cornerstone of the state's educational goals. Over 139,000 Indiana students speak a language other than English at home, and there are over 295 different languages represented in Indiana schools. Of these, over 83,000 students have been…

For more than two decades, tax-credit scholarship (TCS) policies have helped American families provide their children with the learning environment that meets their individual needs. Now available in 19 states, nearly 300,000 students nationwide use tax-credit scholarships to attend the school of their family's choice. TCS policies create an…

From embracing diversity and inclusion to calling for an end to decision-making in the men's room, companies and organizations can take practical and systemic steps to increase women's leadership and further their advancement. "Filling the Pipeline: Advancing More Women into the C-Suite and on Corporate Boards" offers the following…

Across the country, urban school districts are moving beyond industrial-era systems by creating "innovation" or "partnership" schools that have the freedom to reinvent the way they educate students. The Progressive Policy Institute released a how-to guide for legislators, district leaders, and advocates who want to create more…

Much has been written about requirements in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) related to school classification, particularly with respect to approaches for determining if a school should be identified for support. However, less attention has been given to methods for determining when a school's performance is sufficient to exit such…

"Abolitionist Leadership in Schools" offers school and district leaders rich insights and approaches for recreating, restructuring, and reorienting their service to students, families, staff, and communities in crisis. Though often associated with sudden, large-scale disruptions, crises are ongoing matters--particularly among…

This toolkit informs school leaders about the authorizing challenges they may confront, illustrates opportunities and options for school leaders to navigate the authorizing process, and shares useful frameworks for considering the benefits and trade-offs of these options. The toolkit contains the following sections: (1) Strategies &…

This how-to manual provides a structured framework for developing a comprehensive teaching-learning philosophy from articulation through implementation to evaluation--and then reactivation. Using professional literature and teaching-learning experiences, the authors provide pragmatic steps for using a grounded philosophy to inform, engage, and…

The Voluntary Framework of Accountability (VFA) is designed as a set of appropriate measures to determine how well community colleges are serving students. Lack of commonly accepted, appropriate performance measures has often led to misperceptions and frequently an underestimation of community college effectiveness and contributions. It has also…

The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and Jobs for the Future (JFF) released "Leadership Competencies for Learner-Centered, Personalized Education," a resource that serves as a first step in identifying the knowledge, skills, and dispositions leaders must master in order to build and sustain learner-centered, personalized…

Social-emotional learning (SEL) has become an important trend in education; however, it is frequently overlooked at the high school level. Arguably, SEL is even more important at this level than other grade levels for the purposes of effective college and career readiness preparation. The inclusion of SEL into school accountability systems and…

Student-Based Budgeting (SBB)--also called weighted student funding, fair student funding, student-based allocations, or student-centered funding--is a school funding system where schools receive dollars based on the number of enrolled students and their individual needs (such as English language learners, or students from high-poverty…

Last fall, researchers at Bellwether Education Partners began research on how standard authorizing practices could discourage or disadvantage charter schools with nontraditional models, such as dual language immersion, Montessori, and competency-based education models. Throughout the course of their research, the authors spoke to dozens of school…