The identification of students with specific learning disabilities has evolved since the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA) in 2004. This reauthorization gave state agencies parameters that disallowed using the severe discrepancy model for identification as a stand-alone method. In response to…

Sixty-six school districts and more than 150 schools in the state of Kansas are participating in the Kansans Can Redesign Project. In this article, we present a case study of using Design Thinking as a systemic process to structure continuous school improvement. The collage of real-life scenarios presented in our case shows the integration of…

California's school accountability and support system, the Statewide System of Support (System of Support), was designed to transform California's approach to school improvement. Rather than focusing on punitive consequences for underperformance, the System of Support is designed to provide education leaders and educators with needed support to…

To remain internationally competitive, states needed clearer, higher, and comparable K-12 learning standards aligned with college and career expectations, and as ambitious as those of the countries that lead the world in education. Idaho's old academic standards were not preparing students for postsecondary education, which contributed to the…

States are in various stages of reforming how they evaluate their educators, all striving for a new system that can assess a range of abilities and practices over long periods of time and capture the full nature of an educator's performance. The strongest systems look at teaching in a more comprehensive way than evaluations have done in the past,…

Today, state education agencies (SEAs) and their leaders face unprecedented demands. What was once a low-profile job of managing federal aid, providing curricular guidance, and ensuring compliance with various legal obligations is now a far more visible and politically fraught task. The new roles required of state education agencies due to the No…

This bimonthly newsletter provides information about the progress of the Honor States Grant Program, a governor-led effort to improve college--and work-ready graduation rates. This issue explores how effective education governance can support innovative state policy development, successful policy implementation, and a redesigned high school…

The major purpose of this descriptive report is to provide an overview of the structure, capacity, and roles of educational service agencies (ESAs) across five states--Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin--in the Great Lakes region, within the context of the broader statewide systems of support for educational improvement and progress.…

Kentucky's systemic reform initiative has been heralded as one of the more comprehensive and well-sustained reforms in recent history. To evaluate the course of this reform, the challenges associated with researching and evaluating a statewide systemic reform effort are detailed here. By using a description of the politics of evaluating systemic…

Findings of a study that describes restructuring efforts undertaken by state education agencies (SEAs) are presented in this paper. Data were collected through telephone interviews with SEA officials in 24 states that were actively engaged in restructuring and analysis of SEA documents. Factors that contributed to restructuring included the place…

A major challenge facing state policymakers who are demanding a high level of accountability in education is to design an accountability mechanism to track educational reform. The structure and uses of eight exemplary approaches to accountability are examined, resulting in a set of design characteristics for state accountability mechanisms. (TJH)

This report describes the initial efforts and current status of implementing supplemental educational services (SES) in the Northwest Region states, identifies information gaps and areas of further inquiry, and delineates concerns and challenges for the state education agencies. It is an exploratory effort to identify issues for deeper examination…

In mid-July of 1976, more than 70 education policy-makers, practitioners, and researchers representing more than 35 states gathered in Denver to exchange information about the implementation and impact of competency-based education (CBE) in the public schools. This proceedings is a record of those four days. During the conference these…

This report presents the plan for the Technology Integrated Educational Delivery System (TIEDS), which was developed for the Arizona State Department of Education in response to the "State Board Policy on the Development of a Plan for Technology" and the "GAITS Report," to establish the conceptual framework for educational…

A research project investigated the dissemination practices of nine State education agencies (SEA) in order to identify useful techniques which could be adopted by other groups seeking to implement change. Interviewers conducted site visits in Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Montana, New York, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania; local…