Schools Need Good Leaders Now: State Progress in Creating a Learning-Centered School Leadership System

Examines the progress of each of the SREB states, and of the region as a whole, in ensuring that every school has a leader who can help improve student achievement

Data-Driven Teaching: Tools and Trends

Data-Driven Teaching: Tools and Trends, a policy brief released by the Rennie Center for Education Research and Policy, focuses on three district-based data analysis programs and highlights the policy and practice challenges associated with their use. More important, it provides educators and policymakers with guiding questions to assist in the selection of data analysis programs. The brief makes critical recommendations for district and state level policymakers seeking to move toward including data analysis as part of teachers' daily practice.Drawing on research with teachers, principals and superintendents in three urban districts, the Rennie Center's brief recommends that policymakers at both the state and district levels provide teachers with more time and support for the integration of data into their instructional planning

Good Principals Aren't Born -- They're Mentored: Are We Investing Enough to Get the School Leaders We Need?

Draws on survey data from a sample of experienced principal mentors who have guided interns in university-based principal preparation programs, and describes the present condition of mentoring for aspiring school leaders

Measuring What Matters: Using Assessment and Accountability to Improve Student Learning

This report hails testing and accountability as key to improving student learning. CED cautions, however, that tests are a means, not an end, to school reform. More work must be done to ensure that tests are good measures of learning. CED's K-12 efforts will engage business leaders in sustaining support for performance measurement in education and in identifying and overcoming barriers to delivering public education in new ways

Evaluation of the ICT Test Bed project: final report, June 2007

The report describes three strands of evaluation used in the review of the 2006 outcomes from ICT Test Bed and the findings from each strand. a) Quantitative data: Benchmarking of changes in performance on national tests against matched comparator schools and national averages; b) Qualitative data: Site visits including classroom observations, interviews with local authority managers, head teachers, teachers, administrative staff, technicians and students; and c) Document analysis

Does State Policy Help or Hurt the Dropout Problem in California?

Examines the scope and causes of California's dropout problem, and assesses whether some state policies unintentionally drive students out of schools. Proposes a comprehensive policy framework focused on effectively serving at-risk students

Transforming High School Teaching and Learning: A District-wide Design

High school improvement is one of the most pressing issues facing American education but little attention has been paid to reform strategies that will improve teaching and learning. Drawing on the expertise of teachers, principals, superintendents, policy makers and researchers, a new paper from the Aspen Institute Program on Education, Transforming High School Teaching and Learning: A District-wide Design by Aspen Senior Fellow Judy Wurtzel, offers both a new framework and concrete suggestions for a new approach to high school improvement across an urban school district. The data on high school student performance and graduation rates make clear that significant increases in student achievement are necessary if all students are to graduate from high school fully prepared for post-secondary education, citizenship, and work. Recent high school reform has focused on organizational aspects of high school, particularly creating a wide variety of smaller schools, smaller learning communities, and alternative learning pathways to meet the needs of young people. However, while smaller schools may create the relationships and conditions that make high quality instruction possible, improved instruction and achievement does not flow directly from them. Given this track record, questions facing the high school reform movement include: -- What will it take to get high school instructional improvement that results in demonstrated increases in student learning? -- What supports do high school teachers need to be successful in improving instruction and from where will they get them? -- What changes affecting the professional role, knowledge, and skills of teachers are needed if reforms are to be successful? Though the ideas represented in the paper are not new -- some school districts and states have implemented some of elements described -- what is useful is the attempt to lay out a fairly comprehensive picture of high school instructional reform and to push the conversation about high school instructional improvement into some new territory. First, the paper builds on work done in many urban districts at the K- 8 level to create systems of "managed instruction," that is, deliberate efforts to align common curriculum and instructional materials, formative and benchmark assessments, extensive professional development, and instructional leaders who support a shared set of instructional practices. Second, the paper suggests how these approaches can be developed and implemented in ways that are both consistent with and reinforcing of a robust vision of teacher professionalism. Third, the paper recognizes the urgency of attracting and retaining a teacher workforce that embraces this new job description for high school teachers and can effect improvements in student learning. Finally, it is useful to note that this paper focuses primarily on the district role in improving high school instruction. This is because it seems increasingly clear that school districts are a key unit for instructional improvement. However, much of what is described here could be initiated or supported by states, by consortia of districts, or by networks of managed schools within or across districts

Impact Philanthropy to Improve Teaching Quality: Focus on High-Need Secondary Students

Offers models for improving teachers' skills, including through apprenticeships and in-school mentoring; for creating an environment for great teaching through better leadership and whole-school reform; and guidance for donors on the policy environment

Contours of Inclusion: Frameworks and Tools for Evaluating Arts in Education

This collection of essays explores various arts education-specific evaluation tools, as well as considers Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and the inclusion of people with disabilities in the design of evaluation instruments and strategies. Prominent evaluators Donna M. Mertens, Robert Horowitz, Dennie Palmer Wolf, and Gail Burnaford are contributors to this volume. The appendix includes the AEA Standards for Evaluation. (Contains 10 tables, 2 figures, 30 footnotes, and resources for additional reading.) This is a proceedings document from the 2007 VSA arts Research Symposium that preceded the American Evaluation Association's (AEA) annual meeting in Baltimore, MD