Leadership matters. Principals are the primary drivers of school improvement and the best long-term investment to ensure effective teaching and learning at scale. Principals are central to State efforts to implement new college and career-ready standards, execute teacher evaluation and support systems and turn around low-performing schools. These…

Gridley Unified School District serves just over 2,000 students across five schools in a small rural town in the upper Sacramento Valley. The median annual household income in Gridley is just over 60% of the state average. Gridley Unified is one of seven districts studied by researchers at the Learning Policy Institute in a mixed-methods study…

Sitting just north of the U.S.-Mexico border, the Chula Vista Elementary School District (CVESD) supports teaching and learning in California's largest elementary school system. Across its 47 schools, CVESD educators serve over 30,000 students each day, 90% of whom are students of color and over one third of whom are English learners. CVESD is one…

Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD) has been nationally recognized as a consistently high-functioning district for more than 2 decades. The district educates approximately 72,200 students, from preschool to high school, in its 86 schools. Almost 90% are students of color, with 57% Latino/a and 12% African American, while 65% are from…

The San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) supports teaching and learning in California's second-largest school district, educating students from preschool to high school each day. Nearly three quarters of SDUSD students are students of color, including 47% who are Latino/a and 9% who are African American. Almost 60% of students are…

In England, the overwhelming majority (78%) of under fives' nursery places, remains in the private, voluntary and independent (PVI) sector where there is no requirement to employ a qualified teacher. Compared to the maintained state sector early years workforce, this dominant PVI sector tends to be staffed by a poorly qualified workforce. From…

The leadership-for-learning project described in this article is supported by a grant from the Wallace Foundation and implemented through a partnership of faculty in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and faculty at two other universities in the state, the Department of Public…

Paul Bambrick-Santoyo (Managing Director of Uncommon Schools) shows leaders how they can raise their schools to greatness by following a core set of principles. These seven principles, or "levers," allow for consistent, transformational, and replicable growth. With intentional focus on these areas, leaders will leverage much more…

With changes in federal legislation and the proposed reauthorization of "The Elementary and Secondary Education Act," school administrators are held to high standards in an attempt to improve achievement for all students. They no longer just manage their schools but must now be instructional leaders charged with observing and…

Recent research has begun to conceptualise the professional learning of practising teachers who take on leadership roles in schools. In this vein, this article draws on a qualitative interview-based study designed to investigate case writing as a professional learning approach. It focuses on the way in which writing of a published case encouraged…

Two related case studies of secondary mathematics teachers examine the roles and conditions helpful in initiating, directing, and/or supporting teachers' own professional development. Using multiple data sources from school-based and professional settings, we applied analytic induction to identify patterns of similarities and differences in…

What is teacher leadership, and what does it look like in action? Part of a qualitative study to better understand how teachers learn to exercise leadership, this article illustrates indicators of informal teacher leadership through the lived experiences of eight practicing elementary and middle school teachers. Characterizing informal teacher…

Teacher leadership has gained attention in recent years as a plausible means by which educational reform and instructional improvement can be accomplished through ongoing, site-based professional development for teachers. This article reviews and draws conclusions across the research literature on professional development and teacher leadership to…

This paper describes the need for developing, implementing and sustaining professional development (PD) designed to provide a network of coaching support for teachers, an element of independent online study and a collaborative network of peers. Leaders recognize the importance of school structure but need to further address the impact of…

This article examines standards which would define a teacher who is good enough to teach children. A good teacher should understand the development of learners. To ensure inclusive learning environments, the teacher should use understanding of individual differences and diverse cultures. The teacher should also collaborate with others to develop…