Until the late 1990s, Qatar's educational system used the intrinsic-nationalistic and cultural traditions of Arabic schools. The Qatari leadership and stakeholder was outdated; hence, they approached the RAND Corporation to examine and analyze the existing educational system and recommend options for building a new educational system. The RAND…

Despite millions of dollars spent on reform efforts, effective and sustainable improvement still eludes schools. The appropriate development of the professional learning community model, including five key dimensions, provides a structure for educational institutions to bring about sustainable improvements in student achievement. If principals do…

California's Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) requires districts to report multiple measures of student performance that reflect success in the goal of preparing students for college, career, and citizenship. As they engage in the Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP) process, they are expected to use state and local indicator data from…

Key findings from a new study highlight how Learning Forward's long-standing position on professional learning correlates with practices in high-performing systems in Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and British Columbia. The purpose of this article is to share key findings from the study so that educators might apply them to strengthening…

At Rosa Parks, a middle school in a crime-ridden neighborhood, students are advised to "do as they are told" and they will succeed. Unfortunately, "doing what they are told" often translates into repeating information given to them by the teacher, especially when it comes to writing. Meanwhile, students in an affluent…

The phenomenon of school leadership in Puerto Rico is explored in this study, which was an examination of the perceptions and practices of 12 elementary school principals. Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory that functions within a unique political structure yet is held to the same standards as all U.S. districts. The primary method of data collection…

The challenges facing our children in the 21st century are rapidly changing. As a result, schools bear a greater responsibility to prepare students for college, career, and life and must be held accountable for more than just testing and reporting on a narrow set of outcomes aimed at minimum levels of competency. Thus, scholars, educators, and…

After years of contesting that No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was broken and that it forced them to identify too many schools, or the wrong schools, for improvement, over forty states have been granted waivers from the U.S. Department of Education. These waivers give them the flexibility to design new accountability and improvement schemes rather…

The sheer volume of information available today is becoming overwhelming. Yet more information doesn't necessarily makes one smarter. The result is that people are attracted to what is flashy and instantly stimulating, and less and less inclined to pay attention to what is important. Educators are also experiencing the same distracting information…

In an attempt to understand how a narrowed version of accountability in the form of high-stakes assessment deepens inequity rather than improves educational equity, we examine three education documents in Jamaica using critical discourse analysis. Our two research questions were: How did each government document position the Grade Four Literacy…

It is mandated in the Constitution of Pakistan to enhance adult literacy and quality education at primary level through provide free and compulsory education to all children between the ages of 5-16 years. The year 2015 was the deadline for the participants of Dakar declaration (Education for All [EFA] commitment) including Pakistan but they fail…

This paper describes validity of quality improvement system (QIS) performance measures and longitudinal change over four years in Oklahoma 21st Century Community Learning Centers (CCLC) programs. In general, our findings indicate that the Oklahoma Afterschool Improvement Process is performing in accordance with its purposes: using accurate…

It must have seemed simple to the framers of No Child Left Behind. For years, they had poured more and more money into federal programs for schools, yet reading performance had not improved. It appeared that the money had gone down a rat hole, and Congress was ready to hold schools accountable. It was time to get tough. Unfortunately, the…

This is the fourth in a series of reports that are the culmination of two years of research by the Campaign for Educational Equity, a policy and research center at Teachers College, Columbia University, and significant input from the Safeguarding Sound Basic Education Task Force, a statewide group made up of representatives from New York's leading…

Educational choice programs--defined broadly as programs that provide parents with financial aid to help their children opt out of the traditional public school system--are a hallmark of meaningful educational reform. Yet despite widespread news coverage of such programs, polls show most Americans are unfamiliar with how educational choice…