Building Instructional Quality: Inside-Out and Outside-In Perspectives on San Diego's School Reform
This research report looks at the aggressive set of policies San Diego City School District used to improve instruction. It reveals how San Diego consolidated and redirected resources, redesigned the district office as well as work in schools, and mediated and leveraged state policy to further its reform agenda. The report also documents the difficulties of managing the politics and implementation of a coherent approach to change in a large district with an established culture of decentralization located in a state with a piecemeal, sometimes conflicting, menu of reforms.
Allocating Resources and Creating Incentives to Improve Teaching and Learning
This report reviews research, practice, and theory related to resource allocation and its relationship to teaching and learning. The report describes the state of the field, discussing a range of practices, both current and emerging, while framing the central challenges facing leaders who make resource decisions at the state, district, and school levels. The report links the allocation of resources to the exercise of learning-focused leadership.
A Case of Successful Teaching Policy: Connecticut's Long-Term Efforts to Improve Teaching and Learning
This Research Report describes 15-years' worth of successful effort by Connecticut to implement a comprehensive set of teaching quality policies to support improved student learning. The authors hypothesize that the power of Connecticut's teaching policy reform lies not simply in their comprehensiveness and in the state's political stability over the last decade but also in the power of policies to build capacity in teachers, students, administrators, teacher educators and state department staff. A Policy Brief based on this report is also available.