Organizational leaders from nearly every sector have been using continuous improvement models and improvement science for years to improve products, services, and processes. Though continuous improvement processes are not new in education, they are relatively new in the state policy arena. In a continuous improvement system, educators use data,…

Using student information in schools is nothing new nor is the reliance on information technologies supported by external service providers. What is new is the adoption of innovations like cloud computing and data analytics that are increasing teacher and family data access, creating actionable information to drive instruction and decision making,…

Under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), federal education mandates will be decreasing, which means states will have more flexibility and authority than they've had in decades. State education agency (SEA) leaders are confronting great change and great opportunity as many agencies move away from a focus on compliance with federal regulations,…

Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA, 2015) moves education further along the path toward becoming the evidence-based and data-driven profession that policy makers have continually called for. They have stressed the need for hard evidence to undergird educational decisions rather than relying on anecdotes and intuitions. This means teachers must…

Although the Common Core standards do not prescribe pedagogy or forbid playful learning, kindergarten teachers will find it challenging to maintain a playful classroom under this reform. Kindergarten teachers have to cover a more rigorous and accelerated curriculum now, and they are doing so in a context that rewards procedural teaching.

In 2016, California voters overturned a 1998 law that curtailed bilingual instruction throughout the state. After nearly 20 years of "English only" programs, what will it take to restore the schools' capacity to provide a broader range of services to English Learners, including dual language immersion and other forms of bilingual…

The author draws on his extensive experience helping lead Congress's education efforts and later a highly respected education research concern to propose a new approach to federal education policy that expands and transforms the federal role. This new approach would significantly expand federal aid to schools that is not restricted to particular…

Two significant metaphors in the education discourse describing student and teacher roles in academic achievement are Student-as-Product, and Student-as-Consumer. These fail to take into account the importance of students' active engagement in their own learning. Current policy initiatives around education reform reflect these deficits as well.…

The author tells potential and sitting legislators that the education world is much more complex than it appears, and that they should study it closely and diligently, instead of reaching for simplistic, popular, and ultimately harmful solutions.

The focus on using the courts to abolish tenure is a distraction from the important work of improving teacher quality. Unfortunately, the recent decision of Vergara v. California has only perpetuated the mistaken notion that only after tenure is abolished can underperforming teachers be removed. But the authors contend that administrators,…

The authors tell a story of the effects of state and national immigration policies on one teenage girl, and use that situation to call for change that will benefit her and similarly situated students in U.S. schools. The girl was brought to the U.S. when she was a toddler, attended American schools, never returned to or visited her native Mexico,…

By encouraging a single-minded focus on instructional leadership, the training, socializing, and mentoring of school leaders has unwittingly fostered a culture of caged leadership. Leaders are expected to succeed via culture, capacity building, coaching, and consensus--no matter the obstacles in their path. Those are all good things, the author…

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…

In every state in the U.S., students have been victims of sexual abuse at the hands of teachers and other adults at schools. Charol Shakeshaft asks why educators, policy makers, and others connected with schools haven't done more to address this problem but have instead looked the other way, sometimes even allowing colleagues to quietly transfer…

In the election battle between former Gov. Mitt Romney and President Obama, the writer looks at Obama's record and concludes he's earned a second shot, especially considering how different his policies are from his competitor's. Amid a climate of scarce resources and even scarcer political goodwill, President Obama has taken steps to provide all…