In the last 20 years, the United States has spent billions of dollars on policies and programs to turn around, or rapidly improve, its lowest-performing schools. Little consideration has been given to the critical role the school district plays in launching and shaping school turnaround. This case study of one mid-sized urban district's effort to…

Rural schools face particular challenges with teacher quality. The Northeast Tennessee College and Career Ready Consortium was a collaborative reform effort among rural schools with a key goal of improving the quality of instruction in math and science to support its efforts to expand academically rigorous courses. This study examines progress…

In 2015, 26 two- and four-year institutions received three-year grants to implement reforms consistent with the Integrated Planning and Advising for Student Success (iPASS) initiative. Grantees committed to launch or enhance existing technologies and undertake related organizational changes that would enable them to provide more effective advising…

Investing in community colleges is a central part of the Biden administration's education agenda, with the goal of strengthening America's middle class and opening the benefits of education to all Americans. CCRC has conducted 25 years of research on how community colleges can more effectively educate students and set them up to successfully…

The Global Partnership for Education (GPE) has made a commitment to support the multistakeholder pledge made at the second Global Refugee Forum to ensure every child living as a refugee realizes their right to a quality education and is included in national education systems that are adequately supported to cater to the needs of every child, both…

In 2015, 26 two- and four-year institutions received grants to help implement and sustain reforms consistent with the Integrated Planning and Advising for Student Success (iPASS) reform approach. Beginning in 2015, the colleges worked to launch or enhance technologies and related structural and procedural changes that would enable them to provide…

Policy makers' attempts to improve low-achieving schools through reform measures are not new to the 21st century. Research asserts that this policy churn has done little, if anything, to change student achievement levels. Based on the research, I assert that policy reforms such as teacher evaluations and test-based assessment, and school…

The purpose of this guide is to provide states, districts, and schools with information and support to prepare applications for 2015-2016 School Improvement Grants (SIGs). The guide includes tools, checklists, and questions for SEAs and LEAs aligned with the revised SIG requirements, primarily focused on how to leverage the "planning…

The Year 2 Preschool Expansion Grant (PEG) implementation study focuses on the second year of supports and outcomes for teachers, classroom quality, and supports for families. Overall, compared to its first year of implementation, the PEG programs in Year 2 (which was the 2016-17 school year) appear to have made progress towards delivering the key…

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…

Launching and sustaining a laptop initiative is an expensive proposition. For that reason, districts often begin with modest pilots or roll out programs incrementally, a grade or two at a time. These days, few, if any, public school districts have budgets to finance full-service 1-to-1 programs. Instead, some seek outside assistance. Private…

The purpose of the United States Department of Education's (the Department) Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 "Agency Financial Report" (AFR) is to inform Congress, the President, other external stakeholders, and the American people on how the Department used the federal resources entrusted to it to promote student achievement and preparation for…

The article posits a paradigm for school development (SD) in the context of a developing country, which is somewhat different from the dominant SD and school improvement (SI) paradigm in the West. Within this paradigm the norm of a school-parent engagement over pedagogical issues as in the West is replaced by imperatives based on full community…

The purpose of the United States Department of Education's (the Department) Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 "Agency Financial Report" (AFR) is to inform Congress, the President, other external stakeholders, and the American people on how the Department used the federal resources entrusted to it to promote student achievement and preparation for…

At least 5,000 public schools have failed to meet their academic achievement targets for at least five consecutive years. The underlying causes of such failure are usually a combination of weak leadership, inadequate skill levels among teachers, and insufficient high-quality teaching materials. In 2009, the National Governors Association Center…