Northwest Regional Comprehensive Center
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School and District Improvement
Expanded Learning Opportunities: A More Comprehensive Approach to Preparing High School Students for College and a Career
The Alliance for Excellent Education released a brief examining how expanded learning opportunities—including innovations regarding where, when, and how high school students experience teaching and learning—can help overcome the unique challenges faced by today’s high school students.
Portfolio School Districts Project: Handbook
The Center on Reinventing Public Policy released a handbook for state and district leaders interested in designing and implementing a portfolio school district reform strategy. A portfolio school district is a new approach to public education in which a school district provides schools in many ways (e.g., schools operated directly by the district as well as independently run charter schools), but holds all schools accountable for performance. Portfolio districts help schools build capacity for improvement, but they close schools that underperform and open new ones in their place.
Limited Capacity at the State Level: A Threat to Future School Improvement
The Center on Reinventing Public Education released a study identifying key education reform functions performed by state education agencies (SEAs) and estimates the relative level of resources devoted to each activity. The study finds that although states have invested substantial resources in monitoring school performance, they have contributed only modest resources to improving failing schools. Given the federal government's expectation that states take a more active role in improving failing schools, a capacity shortage could prove problematic.
From School Choice to Educational Choice
The American Enterprise Institute’s latest issue of Education Outlook highlights six key aspects of systemic reform. Key points include:
- The "whole school" approach to education reform has made it difficult for specialty education providers to get past bureaucratic rules and offer their services to parents, students, and teachers.
- "Unbundling" education means offering students an assortment of services instead of an indivisible package of "education." Such services could be packaged and customized to fit specific student needs and abilities.
A Self-Assessment Tool: A Coherent Approach to High School Improvement
National High School Center published an online self-assessment tool. The tool is a starting point for identifying high school improvement priorities and enables users in schools and districts to a) identify the strengths and weaknesses of their current high school reform efforts, and b) align and build on these current and planned reform initiatives to develop a comprehensive high school improvement plan that will result in rigorous and high-quality teaching and learning for all students.
Schools in High Gear: Reforms That Work When They Work Together
The Policy Innovators in Education (PIE) Network released a collection of essays explaining why a silver bullet won't fix America's schools; comprehensive policy solutions are needed. Leaders of five national organizations that serve as policy partners for the (PIE) Network co-authored the paper. They explain how six core ideas crucial to education reform evolved and why they continued to be sharpened through the interplay with other goals.
State Strategies for Fixing Failing Schools and Districts
The National Governors Association Center for Best Practices released a brief examining the ways to cope with the underlying causes of failing schools, including weak leadership; inadequate skill levels among teachers; and insufficient high-quality teaching materials. The brief offers states ideas to fix failing schools and districts.
Find What Works
The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) has created a new tool assisting visitors in finding interventions that address their school or district's needs and summarizes their evidence of effectiveness.
Going Exponential: Growing the Charter School Sector’s Best
The Progressive Policy Institute has released a report drawing on lessons from high-growth organizations in other sectors for charter school operators and management organizations and offers charter operators practical advice for how to scale up the lessons learned from rapid growing organizations.
Turning Around the Nation’s Lowest-Performing Schools: Five Steps Districts Can Take to Improve Their Chances of Success
The Center for American Progress has published a report by Education Resource Strategies, Inc. (ERS), identifying five steps that districts can take in designing and implementing their school improvement programs that will increase the probability that their efforts will achieve lasting improvement:
- Understand what each school needs
- Quantify what each school gets and how it is used
- Invest in the most important changes first
- Customize the strategy to the school
- Change the district, not just the schools
