In 2014, state and national leaders found many aspects of turning around America's low-performing schools even more daunting than in the previous year. These views were revealed in the Center on School Turnaround's (CST's) 2014 February/March survey of school turnaround leaders in State Education Agencies (SEA) and directors of the nation's…

This guidebook will help the staff members of education agencies gain an understanding of what Education Enterprise Architecture (EEA) is and how it can help an agency accomplish its vision and goals. The audiences for this guidebook include agency staff already charged with leading agency-wide planning and implementation that encompasses the…

This report presents the results of a thorough study conducted by American Institutes for Research (AIR) to investigate the cost of providing an "adequate" education to California students attending public elementary, middle, and high schools. The study addresses the following question: "What is the cost of providing all California…

State education agencies, or SEAs, are being asked-and in some cases, forced-to make operational changes in the name of school improvement. New laws and expectations are pushing them to play a greater role in managing school performance, displacing to a significant degree their decades-old responsibility for monitoring local school districts for…

An individual student's educational experience often includes multiple transitions: progressing through K12 school levels, transitioning to postsecondary education or the workforce, and sometimes changing schools. It is important for both the student and the school systems that course information be easily understood and transferrable through each…

"The SEA of the Future" is an education publication series examining how state education agencies can shift from a compliance to a performance-oriented organization through strategic planning and performance management tools to meet growing demands to support education reform while improving productivity. This volume, the sixth in the…

The impetus for this report is new evidence that state department of education work to align instruction with standards may make a difference for teachers' practices and understanding about their state standards. Using data from the RAND American Teacher Panel, the authors found that Louisiana teachers were more likely than other teachers to…

This paper presents the results of a study that examined the effects of using an action research process to explore science teachers' views on science literacy as well as improve collaboration among department members. Data were collected by documenting the action research process and interviewing teachers at a suburban K-12 school in Southern…

What does it take to transform a large, bureaucratic institution with a fractured culture and a compliance orientation into a nurturing, collaborative, vision-directed organization? This report and the accompanying research brief endeavor to answer that question by examining a humanistic and systems thinking approach to cultural change that took…

In our 2019 annual report, we provide insight into our sponsorship work during the year and the performance of our sponsored schools. We are also pleased to highlight the good work of our colleagues on Fordham's policy and research teams. Our schools' academic performance shows several schools doing very well on Ohio's value added (growth) measure…

Data are more than just test scores, and by effectively accessing and using different types of data--such as attendance, grades, and course-taking--teachers, parents, and school and district leaders can help ensure that every student is on a path for success every day, not just at the end of the school year. The 10 State Actions to Ensure…

"The SEA of the Future" is an education publication series examining how state education agencies can shift from a compliance to a performance-oriented organization through strategic planning and performance management tools to meet growing demands to support education reform while improving productivity. This volume, the second in the…

"The SEA of the Future" is an education publication series examining how state education agencies can shift from a compliance to a performance-oriented organization through strategic planning and performance management tools to meet growing demands to support education reform while improving productivity. This inaugural edition of…

Conventional wisdom sees education as a primary vehicle through which all people can graduate out of poverty. Education as an instrument of societal change is capable of facilitating a wide range of human rights. However, in many developing countries the education gap seems to be growing within schools in urban, rural and remote areas. The key…

The following profiles address how the state departments of education are supporting local educators in classroom implementation of the states' new college- and career-readiness standards by providing (or facilitating the development of) aligned instructional resources and materials. These resources and materials are supplementary supports that…