A variety of stakeholders work to ensure opportunities for students with disabilities to learn in and through the arts. Because they work in various disciplines in the fields of arts education and special education, these stakeholders lack opportunities to share resources and information. The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and its…

The Common Core State Standards, adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia, raise the bar for what students need to learn at each stage of their K-12 education. The goal is to better prepare students for college and careers. The most important thing that education leaders can do to help the Common Core succeed is to support teachers in…

Launched in 2006 to address issues of national competitiveness and equity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, the National Science Foundation-funded Model Replication Institutions (MRI) program sought to improve the quality, availability, and diversity of STEM education. The project offered technical assistance to…

In 2009 the Obama administration announced a focused commitment to turn around 5,000 of the United States' chronically lowest-performing public schools as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). This commitment came with $3 billion in funding for the School Improvement Grant program, or SIG, along with new guidelines to ensure…

Most nonprofit leaders understand the importance of building strong organizational capacity, but finding ways to support and strengthen this capacity often poses significant challenges. Nonprofit leaders may hesitate to divert money from direct services when funds are needed to support operations. Some experts in the field also note what they…

Museums for America (MFA) is the largest IMLS grant program for museums; it supports institutions by investing in high-priority, high-value activities that are clearly linked to the institution's strategic plan and enhance its value to its community. MFA grants situate projects within a framework of meeting three strategic goals: engaging…

The federal School Improvement Grants (SIG) program aims to improve student achievement by promoting the implementation of four school intervention models: transformation, turnaround, restart, and closure. Previous research provides evidence that low-performing schools adopt some practices promoted by the four models, but little is known about how…

This monograph examines progress in, and policies for, access to elementary education over the past 60 years, the role played by political factors in the process of policy formulation and implementation and the drivers and inhibitors of the implementation of reforms in elementary education in recent years in India. Drawing on interviews and…

This paper provides a snapshot into how three individual schools from three different countries practice inclusive education. In the case of the UK primary school, inclusive practices are focused on the provision of external resources and expertise to supplement instruction in the classroom. In the Netherlands, the focus is on teacher change…

Universities of Technology (UTs) offer career-focused education in a wide variety of disciplines and fields. Traditionally, UTs recruited academic staff with relevant workplace experience, rather than academic qualifications. The result of this strategy was, while many lecturers possessed professional qualifications in their field, they did not…

In the fall of 2009, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded a three-year project proposed by the International Baccalaureate (IB) to demonstrate the feasibility of increasing the participation of minority students and students in poverty in its Middle Years Programme (MYP) and Diploma Programme (DP) in selected school districts in the…

Many reformers suggest that urban district central offices would strengthen teaching and learning districtwide if they operated as "learning organizations." But what does it mean for a school district central office to operate as a learning organization? This article draws on research about learning theory and school district central offices to…

This paper examines how higher education can contribute to Africa's transformation, reviews the challenges and priorities for higher education institution building, and introduces a proposed partnership program among African and U.S. higher education institutions to strengthen African higher education. In July of 2007 the National Association of…

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA) requires states and the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) to define and determine whether schools are making adequate yearly progress (AYP) toward meeting the goal of 100 percent academic proficiency. To address tribes' needs for cultural preservation, NCLBA allows tribal groups to…

The set of two case studies examines the supports for instructional improvement in two school districts through the experience of individual teachers who are trying to change their practice in accordance with the district's reform work. Our overarching research question for these case studies was: What supports this teacher in changing his or her…