In 2010, Jefferson County (Jeffco) Public Schools in Colorado was awarded a five-year grant to implement the Jeffco Strategic Compensation (StratComp) Initiative. StratComp, which provides professional supports to all educators, is a new teacher evaluation observation system in which administrators and peers conduct observations, job-embedded professional development is aligned to ...
This fourth and final brief in the California Collaborative on District Reform series examines how the Fresno-Long Beach Learning Partnership uses data to inform work across and within the districts. The Partnership is a collaboration that aims to improve student outcomes, accelerate achievement for all students, and close achievement gaps ...
The Plan, Do, Study, Act Process is central to the improvement of instructional routines. Watch one of the Better Math Teaching Network members in real time and in a real classroom setting introduce the Plan, Do, Study, Act, or PDSA, process.
For struggling schools, partnerships with external experts can seem like a critical lifeline. The reality of school turnaround partnerships, however, does not always resemble the ideal. What qualities of an external partnership indicate a greater likelihood for success? What actions by school administrators may make these relationships more effective? ...
The Local Control Funding Formula has introduced positive and much-needed change to California’s approach to K-12 education funding, but received criticism for being archaic, cumbersome, difficult to complete, opaque, and incoherent. A new brief from the California Collaborative on District Reform and Pivot Learning, Fostering Innovation: How User-Centered Design Can ...
Disparities persist in educational achievement for students of color and low-income students. In this video interview, Darren Woodruff, principal researcher at AIR, explains how schools can create a climate to help reduce the achievement gap and help all students learn.
As students across the country return to school, those responsible for their care and education are finalizing their plans to ensure a productive year. AIR’s evidence-based resources for back to school support educators through three essential lenses: school climate, safety, and social and emotional learning (SEL); college and career readiness; ...
The American Institutes for Research, one of the nation’s leading education research organizations, is acquiring The McKenzie Group, Inc., an influential educational consulting firm, in a move designed to better serve the needs of urban school districts seeking systemic reform.
AIR researchers and leaders at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation began a nationwide study of teaching and learning in foundation-supported schools with a pilot study in Washington State.
With the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the federal School Improvement Grant (SIG) program underwent three major shifts; by increasing the level of funding, better targeting these funds to the persistently lowest-achieving schools, and requiring that schools adopt specific intervention models, the revamped SIG program ...