Statewide Systems of Support
Advancing Systemwide Instructional Reform: Lessons from Three Urban Districts Partnered with the Institute for Learning
This study offers lessons learned by three urban districts working to improve instructional quality and student performance through a partnership with the University of Pittsburgh's Institute for Learning (IFL) for three years or more. (RAND Education, 2005)
Authors: Julie A. Marsh, Kerri A. Kerr, Gina S. Ikemoto, Hilary Darilek, Marika Suttorp, Ron Zimmer, Heather Barney
Breaking the Habit of Low Performance: Successful School Restructuring Stories
While many districts and schools commit significant resources, both human and fiscal, to school improvement, little real improvement remains the norm. Yet, some schools and districts have proven that even chronically failing schools can succeed at rapid improvement. Public Impact, working on behalf of the Center on Innovation & Improvement, examined five schools that successfully restructured. At each of these schools, multiple factors enabled them to kick the low-performance habit. (Center on Innovation and Improvement, 2009)
Authors: Dana Brinson and Lauren Morando Rhim
Characteristics of Improved School Districts: Themes from Research
This report was based on the analysis of more than 80 research reports and articles, many on districts that have shown improvement at the elementary level. The analysis identified 13 common themes clustered into four broad categories: Effective Leadership, Quality Teaching and Learning, Support for Systemwide Improvement, and Clear and Collaborative Relationships. The report also sets forth questions for districts related to each characteristic and includes an extensive bibliography. (Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction in Olympia, Washington, 2004)
Authors: G. Sue Shannon and Pete Bylsma
Competencies for Turnaround Success
The four resources in the series clarify the most critical competencies—or patterns of thinking, feeling, speaking and acting—that enable people to be successful in attempts to transform schools from failure to excellence quickly and dramatically. Two companion ‘toolkits’ can be used as step-by-step guides by districts and other organizations seeking to hire individuals to serve as turnaround principals or teachers. (Public Impact, 2008)
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Developing Early Warning Systems to Identify Potential High School Dropouts
The following two resources are intended to support educators at all levels of the public school system in building data systems that identify probable high school dropouts before they leave school. The first resource, an early warning system guide, discusses the factors that help predict the probability that individual students will eventually drop out of high school prior to graduating and includes step-by-step instructions for building an early warning system. The second resource, an early warning system tool, allows educators to input student-level data and automatically calculate whether individual students are on track to graduate or are at risk of dropping out. (National High School Center, 2008)
Download Early Warning System Guide
Download Early Warning System Tool
Educational Architects: Do State Education Agencies Have the Tools Necessary to Implement NCLB?
The second report in a series of Center on Education Policy publications on the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) examines the capacity of state education agencies to carry out the requirements of NCLB. An analysis of survey data from all 50 states and interview data of 15 high-ranking state education officials from 11 states revealed four major capacity challenges: (1) limitations in staffing and infrastructure; (2) inadequate federal and state funding; (3) a lack of sufficient guidance and technical support from the U.S. Department of Education; and (4) barriers in NCLB and within state education agencies. (Center on Education Policy, 2005)
Authors: Angela Minnici and Deanna D. Hill
Evaluating Supplemental Educational Service Providers: Suggested Strategies for States
This guidebook is designed to help state educational agencies (SEAs) create an effective system to evaluate state-approved supplemental educational service (SES) providers. The guidebook will help readers to determine evaluation measures, identify possible evaluation methodologies, and address the technical and practical considerations associated with an evaluation. Although this guidebook is of primary interest to states, it can also help school districts and SES providers understand their roles in the evaluation process. (Center on Innovation and Improvement, 2006)
Authors: Steven M. Ross, Allison Potter, and Jennifer Harmon
Framework for an Effective Statewide System of Support
The CII framework considers the broader context that the state provides for school improvement, including the incentives and opportunities for constructive change as well as systemic attention to the pre-service preparation and licensing of school leaders and teachers, state data and information systems (including school improvement processes and resources), state initiatives to place high-quality school leaders and teachers in hard-to-staff districts and schools, and the creation of “new space” for innovative schools. (Center on Innovation and Improvement, 2009)
Author: Sam Redding
Handbook on Restructuring and Substantial School Improvement
The purpose of this handbook is to present modules that will assist states, districts, and schools in establishing policies, procedures, and support to successfully restructure schools. The handbook is informed by leading experts on restructuring and school improvement. (Center on Innovation and Improvement, 2007)
Editor: Herbert J. Walberg
Restructuring (PowerPoints)
What Works When (Hassel)
Change and Including Stakeholders (Perlman)
Sustaining Change (Redding)
Statewide Systems of Support (Rhim)
Restructuring Tools (Rhim-Hassel)
Handbook on Statewide Systems of Support
This handbook is for state leaders who are designing or revising statewide systems of support for schools identified as low-performing, and for district and school leaders who are seeking to improve school performance. The handbook surveys the research related to statewide systems of support, presents the experience and insights of educational leaders in how such support can be organized, and suggests actionable principles for improving schools. Articles within the handbook provide a conceptual framework for thinking about a state system, profile activities in selected states, and tools that may be used to strengthen a statewide system of support. (Center on Innovation and Improvement, 2007)
Authors: Sam Redding and Herbert J. Walberg
How Can State Education Agencies Support District Improvement? A Conversation amongst Educational Leaders, Researchers, and Policy Actors
In the summer of 2007, The Education Alliance at Brown University and The Urban Education Policy Program convened over fifty state education leaders, superintendents and district leaders, researchers, and other educational actors to collectively consider the challenges and possibilities of state education agencies to catalyze and support district improvement. More than a traditional proceedings document, this report contains a detailed analysis of the themes and ideas that were generated by participants. The cross-stakeholder discussions resulted in the identification of multiple strategies that can be utilized by state education agencies to leverage their capacity and provide meaningful support to districts and schools. (The Education Alliance at Brown University, 2008)
Authors: Chris Unger, Brett Lane, Elisabeth Cutler, Saeyun Lee, Joye Whitney, Elise Arruda, and Martin Silva
Improving SES Quality: State Approval, Monitoring, and Evaluation of SES Providers
The purpose of this practice guide is to provide state SES directors and other stakeholders with useful information to help improve their practices in the areas of approving, monitoring, and evaluating providers. At the same time, the guide documents the collective accomplishments, successes, and challenges of states in these three areas. (Center on Innovation and Improvement, 2009)
Authors: Steven Ross, Jennifer Harmon and Kenneth Wong
The Mega System: A Handbook for Continuous Improvement within a Community of the School
This handbook portrays the school as a system with many parts to be continuously engineered to precision rather than a static model to be replicated. It focuses on the internal operations of a school and the community of people who have every reason to provide the best possible education for the children in their midst. The incentive for improvement lies in parents’ desire for their children to succeed and in the commitment to service of school people professionally equipped and empowered to pursue excellence in the community to which they belong. (Academic Development Institute, 2006)
Reaching New Heights: Turning Around Low Performing Schools – A Guide for Governors
This paper supports the idea that states should improve low performing schools through partnerships with districts. A coherent district system of instructional support and a unified district vision that drives continuous improvement is essential. Furthermore, with increasing numbers of schools identified for improvement, states should customize their accountability systems to identify the lowest-performing schools and concentrate resources on the schools most in need. (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, 2003)
Authors: Christopher Mazzeo and Ilene Berman
The School District Role in Educational Change: A Review of the Literature
Evidence suggests that successful school districts use a large repertoire of strategies to mobilize and support system-wide success in student learning, and that the impact of the strategies depends on their comprehensive use in a coordinated way, not the selective enactment of some over others or in isolation. (International Centre for Educational Change at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 2003)
Author: Stephen E. Anderson
School Districts and Educational Improvement Bibliography: An Annotated Bibliography of Research, 1988 to the present
Current annotated bibliography of research on school and district improvement. (Annenberg Institute for School Reform, last updated May 2007)
School Turnarounds: A Review of the Cross-Sector Evidence on Dramatic Organizational Improvement
Under the No Child Left Behind Act, schools are required to restructure after five consecutive years of inadequate progress. Yet, while the process of turning around a failing school is fundamental to NCLB, there is a limited literature base documenting successful turnarounds in the education sector. This evidence review synthesizes the literature from the education sector and across multiple other sectors – public, nonprofit, and private – related to successful restructuring of low-performing schools. (Center on Innovation and Improvement, 2007)
State Data Systems: A Solution-Finding Report
This document reports on a data system that can generate customized reports for stakeholders analyzing student and school performance and on a web-based data system that guides school improvement planning through the retrieval of school data, multi-year, disaggregated student assessment data, and suggested resources for addressing improvement. (Center on Innovation and Improvement, 2009)
State Systems of Support under NCLB: Design Components and Quality Considerations
Under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), state education agencies are required to assume new roles and responsibilities. Among these is the establishment of a state system to support schools identified for improvement under the Act. Conceptualizing and operationalizing these systems of support has been a challenge for many state agencies, in part because this role is a departure from the traditional compliance monitoring activities with which state officials are most familiar. This brief presents data from a national survey of state administrators to describe trends in the implementation of this NCLB mandate. The authors begin by outlining the common components of state systems of support under NCLB and then suggest a set of research-supported indicators of the quality of those supports. Their purpose is to provide state officials and policy analysts a framework with which to assess and refine current and planned systems of state support. (American Institutes for Research, 2008)
Authors: Kerstin Carlson Le Floch, Andrea Boyle, and Susan Bowles Therriault
Strengthening the Statewide System of Support: A Manual for the Comprehensive Center and State Education Agency
Strengthening the Statewide System of Support is a technical assistance manual and a companion to the Handbook on Statewide Systems of Support. These two documents, with additional resources at the Center on Innovation and Improvement, enable a state education agency (SEA), with technical assistance from a Comprehensive Center, to self-assess its system of support and plan for its improvement. (Center on Innovation and Improvement, 2007)
Authors: Sam Redding and Herbert J. Walberg
Toolkit on Teaching and Assessing Students with Disabilities
This toolkit holds information that states will find useful in supporting academic success for students with disabilities, including research briefs and resources on improving instruction, assessment, and accountability; large-scale assessments; technical assistance products; and resources on assessment, instructional practices, behavior, and accommodations. (U.S. Department of Education, 2006)
Tough Decisions: Closing Persistently Low-Performing Schools
This paper describes why and how four urban districts—Denver Public Schools, Chicago Public Schools, Hartford Public Schools, and Pittsburgh Public Schools—closed schools for low performance. It focuses on two distinct closure strategies: 1) closing school buildings and dispersing students to other schools; and 2) closing schools and reopening the schools with new leadership and staff, often called “starting fresh.” Written for state and district officials, this paper is designed to help decision makers who are contemplating closing schools for performance reasons learn from districts that have already tackled this difficult challenge. (Center on Innovation and Improvement, 2009)
Author: Lucy Steiner
The Turnaround Challenge: Why America’s Best Opportunity to Dramatically Improve Student Achievement Lies in Our Worst-Performing Schools
This report emphasizes the urgency of turning around our nation’s struggling schools and describes promising practices in several cities to inform states, districts, and schools conducting this work. According to the report, successful school turnaround entails: recognition that turnaround is different and far more difficult than school improvement; dramatic change as opposed to incremental-change strategies; use of high-capacity, external turnaround partners to integrate services in support of clusters of turnaround schools; and new state and district turnaround offices that have flexible operating rules and resources. (Mass Insight Education and Research Institute, 2007)
Authors: Andrew Calkins, William Guenther, Grace Belfiore, and Dave Lash
Turning Around Chronically Low-Performing Schools
This guide identifies practices that can improve the performance of chronically low-performing schools—a process commonly referred to as creating "turnaround schools." The four recommendations in this guide work together to help failing schools make adequate yearly progress. (U.S. Department of Education, 2008)