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A burgeoning set of education-related organizations join networks each year, reflecting a shared belief that problems in education are too complex for any one educator or organization to solve on their own and that collaboration can support educational improvement. The goal of this paper is to describe how networked improvement communities (NICs) create a social structure to catalyze the type of community that can solve complex problems. We draw from prior theorizing, the research literature on network and learning community development, and observations of developing NICs to articulate a framework for network development. The framework is intended to be an analytic tool for thinking and reasoning about NIC emergence and maturation. [This report was presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Toronto, ON.]

On December 5, 2014, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching's DC office hosted an invitation-only gathering of fifteen federal, state, and local education policy experts in both the public and nonprofit sectors. The goal of the meeting was to explore strategies to improve Title II, Part A of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act in anticipation of the Act's reauthorization. During this meeting participants were encouraged to think about the teacher-quality problem in new ways by first fully exploring the root causes of the issue, which often go unexamined in the fast-moving world of public policy. Using improvement-science techniques developed by the Carnegie Foundation to help educators and education policymakers see in their entirety the ways that systems produce problematic outcomes, participants explored the root causes of this problem statement: "The public education system is not adequately recruiting, retaining, and supporting a high-quality/effective teacher workforce for all students." The exploration process involved identifying the major sources of the recruitment, retention, and support problem, and then producing a comprehensive mapping of the contributing factors in each major category. It yielded a variety of insights that may not have surfaced had the group jumped right into solutions without first seeing the system as a whole. Recommendations emerged on the distribution of Title II funds, spending priorities, the collection and report of spending data, and the communication of program expectations to funding recipients. In exploring the reasons why public education does not adequately recruit, retain, and support a high quality teaching workforce, participants identified six major problem areas: preparation, leadership, development, job design, culture/norms, and compensation. These areas provided the basis for an in-depth analysis of the teacher-quality challenge. This report provides details of the following recommendations that were a result of the expert convention: (1) Changing the way states and LEAs receive Title II, Part A funds; (2) Changing which activities are funded by Title II, Part A; (3) Changing the data systems and reporting around Title II, Part A; and (4) Changing the communication about and purpose of Title II, Part A. The following are appended: (1) Complete List of Root Causes as Expanded from Figure 1; and (2) Complete List of Participants' Ideas for Changing Title II.

Principals play a central role in how well a school performs. They are responsible for establishing school goals and developing strategies for meeting them. They lead their schools' instructional programs, recruit and retain teachers, maintain the school climate, and allocate resources. How well they execute these and other leadership functions is a key determinant of school outcomes. Many districts are trying to create value-added measures for principals much like those they use for teachers. The idea is compelling, but the situations are not necessarily analogous. Estimating value-added for principals turns out to be even more complex than estimating value-added for teachers. Three methods have been suggested for assessing a principal's value-added. One method attributes all aspects of school effectiveness (how well students perform relative to students at other schools with similar background characteristics and students with similar peers) to the principal; a second attributes to the principal only the difference between the effectiveness of that school under that principal and the effectiveness of the same school under other principals; and a third attributes school improvement (gains in school effectiveness) to the principal. This document reviews each of these distinct methods and discusses the current state of knowledge, what more needs to be known, and what can't be resolved by empirical evidence on this issue.

In recent years, "continuous improvement" has become a popular catchphrase in the field of education. However, while continuous improvement has become commonplace and well-documented in other industries, such as healthcare and manufacturing, little is known about how this work has manifested itself in education. This white paper attempts to map the landscape of this terrain by identifying and describing organizations engaged in continuous improvement, and by highlighting commonalities and differences among them. The findings classify three types of organizations engaged in continuous improvement: those focused on instructional improvement at the classroom level; those concentrating on system-wide improvement; and those addressing collective impact. Each type is described in turn and illustrated by an organizational case study. Through the analysis, six common themes that characterize all three types of organizations (e.g., leadership and strategy, communication and engagement, organizational infrastructure, methodology, data collection and analysis, and building capacity) are enumerated. This white paper makes four concluding observations. First, the three case studies provide evidence of organizations conducting continuous improvement work in the field of education, albeit at different levels and in different ways. Second, entry points to continuous improvement work are not mutually exclusive, but are nested and, hence, mutually informative and comparative. Third, continuous improvement is not synonymous with improving all organizational processes simultaneously; rather, research and learning cycles are iterative and gradual in nature. Fourth, despite being both iterative and gradual, it is imperative that improvement work is planned and undertaken in a rigorous, thoughtful, and transparent fashion. The following are appended: (1) Selected Continuous Improvement Methodologies; (2) Baldrige Education Criteria for Performance Excellence Framework; (3) Examples of Improvement Artifacts from the School District of Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin; (4) Examples of Improvement Artifacts from Montgomery County Public Schools, Maryland; and (5) Examples of Improvement Artifacts from Strive Partnership Cincinnati.

Building a stronger teacher workforce requires the thoughtful orchestration of multiple processes working together in a human capital system. This white paper presents a framework that can be used to take stock of current efforts to enhance the teacher workforce in school districts or educational organizations, as well as their underlying theories of how the teacher workforce improves over time. The paper refines and provides evidentiary support for a human capital system framework composed of four subsystems that ideally work together to build a stronger teacher workforce: (1) getting the right teachers in the right positions on time (Acquire); (2) supporting professional growth in school-based learning communities (Develop); (3) nurturing, rewarding, and challenging high-performing teachers (Sustain); and (4) informing evidence-based personnel decisions (Evaluate). Attention to this framework will engender a corps of teachers with the capacity and expertise to collectively facilitate enhanced educational outcomes.

A teacher's value-added score is intended to convey how much that teacher has contributed to student learning in a particular subject in a particular year. Different school districts define and compute value-added scores in different ways. A variety of people may see value-added estimates, and each group may use them for different purposes. Teachers themselves may want to compare their scores with those of others and use them to improve their work. Administrators may use them to make decisions about teaching assignments, professional development, pay, or promotion. Parents, if they see the scores, may use them to request particular teachers for their children. And, finally, researchers may use the estimates for studies on improving instruction. Using value-added scores in any of these ways can be controversial. Some people doubt the validity of the achievement tests on which the scores are based, some question the emphasis on test scores to begin with, and others challenge the very idea that student learning gains reflect how well teachers do their jobs. The authors' purpose is to answer a more limited, but essential, question: How might educators reasonably interpret value-added scores? Social science has yet to come up with a perfect measure of teacher effectiveness, so anyone who makes decisions on the basis of value-added estimates will be doing so in the midst of uncertainty. Making choices in the face of doubt is hardly unusual--they routinely contend with projected weather forecasts, financial predictions, medical diagnoses, and election polls. But as in these other areas, in order to sensibly interpret value-added scores, it is important to do two things: understand the sources of uncertainty and quantify its extent. The authors' aim is to identify possible errors of interpretation, to consider how likely these errors are to arise, and to help educators assess how consequential they are for different decisions. They will begin by asking how value-added scores are defined and computed. Next, they will consider two sources of error: statistical bias and statistical imprecision. (Contains 4 figures, 1 table, and 11 endnotes.)

Value-added models have caught the interest of policymakers because, unlike using student tests scores for other means of accountability, they purport to "level the playing field." That is, they supposedly reflect only a teacher's effectiveness, not whether she teaches high- or low-income students, for instance, or students in accelerated or standard classes. Yet many people are concerned that teacher effects from value-added measures "will" be sensitive to the characteristics of her students. More specifically, they believe that teachers of low-income, minority, or special education students will have lower value-added scores than equally effective teachers who are teaching students outside these populations. Other people worry that the opposite might be true--that some value-added models might cause teachers of low-income, minority, or special education students to have "higher" value-added scores than equally effective teachers who work with higher-achieving, less risky populations. In this brief, the author discusses what is and is not known about how well value-added measures level the playing field for teachers by controlling for student characteristics. He first discusses the results of empirical explorations. He then addresses outstanding questions and the challenges to answering them with empirical data. Finally, he discusses the implications of these findings for teacher evaluations and the actions that may be based on them. (Contains 26 endnotes.)

There are good reasons for re-thinking teacher evaluation. Evaluation systems in most school districts appear to be far from rigorous. A recent study showed that more than 99 percent of teachers in a number of districts were rated "satisfactory," which does not comport with empirical evidence that teachers differ substantially from each other in terms of their effectiveness. Likewise, the ratings do not reflect the assessment of the teacher workforce by administrators, other teachers, or students. Evaluation systems that fail to recognize the true differences that are known to exist among teachers greatly hamper the ability of school leaders and policymakers to make informed decisions about such matters as which teachers to hire, what teachers to help, which teachers to promote, and which teachers to dismiss. Thus it is encouraging that policymakers are developing more rigorous evaluation systems, many of which are partly based on student test scores. Yet while the idea of using student test scores for teacher evaluations may be conceptually appealing, there is no universally accepted methodology for translating student growth into a measure of teacher performance. In this brief, the authors review what is known about how measures that use student growth align with one another, and what that agreement or disagreement might mean for policy. (Contains 3 tables and 44 endnotes.)

In the recent drive to revamp teacher evaluation and accountability, measures of a teacher's value added have played the starring role. But the star of the show is not always the best actor, nor can the star succeed without a strong supporting cast. In assessing teacher performance, observations of classroom practice, portfolios of teachers' work, student learning objectives, and surveys of students are all possible additions to the mix. All these measures vary in what aspect of teacher performance they measure. While teaching is broadly intended to help students live fulfilling lives, educators must be more specific about the elements of performance that contribute to that goal--differentiating contributions to academic skills, for instance, from those that develop social skills. Once educators have established what aspect of teaching they intend to capture, the measures differ in how valid and reliable they are in capturing that aspect. Although there are big holes in what they know about how evaluation measures stack up on these two criteria, they can draw some important conclusions from the evidence collected so far. In this brief, the author will show how existing research can help district and state leaders who are thinking about using multiple measures of teacher performance to guide them in hiring, development, and retention. (Contains 30 endnotes.)

Value-added models measure teacher performance by the test score gains of their students, adjusted for a variety of factors such as the performance of students when they enter the class. The measures are based on desired student outcomes such as math and reading scores, but they have a number of potential drawbacks. One of them is the inconsistency in estimates for the same teacher when value added is measured in a different year, or for different subjects, or for different groups of students. Some of the differences in value added from year to year result from true differences in a teacher's performance. Differences can also arise from classroom peer effects; the students themselves contribute to the quality of classroom life, and this contribution changes from year to year. Other differences come from the tests on which the value-added measures are based; because test scores are not perfectly accurate measures of student knowledge, it follows that they are not perfectly accurate gauges of teacher performance. In this brief, the authors describe how value-added measures for individual teachers vary across time, subject, and student populations. They discuss how additional research could help educators use these measures more effectively, and they pose new questions, the answers to which depend not on empirical investigation but on human judgment. Finally, they consider how the current body of knowledge, and the gaps in that knowledge, can guide decisions about how to use value-added measures in evaluations of teacher effectiveness. (Contains 3 tables and 17 endnotes.)

In early January 2004, in connection with its centennial, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching began a 30-month appraisal of relations between influential philanthropic foundations and educational institutions (both K-12 and higher education) with the goal of strengthening those relations. The authors, both co-directors of the project and editors of the book based on the project, summarize their findings in this brochure. They interviewed nearly three dozen leaders who had worked with and/or for foundations and educational institutions. Some of them were involved primarily in K-12 education or in higher education, some in foundation programming and leadership, and some in both spheres. The comments of these foundation leaders about higher education, K-12 education, and foundations are listed. The authors then present a set of six recommendations on how relations between foundations and institutions of education might be strengthened. These recommendations are: (1) Building Educational Capital; (2) Openness; (3) External Review; (4) Professional Development; (5) Collaboration; and (6) Putting Educational Capital to Work. This summary is based on the Carnegie/Jossey-Bass publication of the same title, "Reconnecting Education and Foundations: Turning Good Intentions into Educational Capital," [ED493650]. The overarching goal of the recommendations and the essays that comprise the book is to encourage a new look at how foundations work in education. [This project was also supported by the TIAA-CREF Institute.]

The Carnegie Foundation recently completed a comprehensive survey of more than 20,000 teachers in all 50 states about their involvement in shaping classroom and school policy. The report consists of a brief introductory analysis of the survey by foundation president Ernest L. Boyer, followed by 10 tables presenting, for each state, the percentages of teachers who report being "involved" or "not very involved" in decisions on 10 dimensions of classroom and school policy: choosing textbooks and instructional materials, shaping the curriculum, setting standards for student behavior, tracking students into special classes, designing staff development and in-service programs, setting promotion and retention policies, deciding school budgets, evaluating teacher performance, selecting new teachers, and selecting new administrators. Teacher involvement in decision-making varies widely from state to state. For example, 93 percent of Vermont teachers say they are involved in choosing textbooks, whereas 61 percent of Maryland teachers so indicated. Participation in budget decisions ranges from 57 percent in Hawaii to 8 percent in North Dakota. In his analysis, Boyer recommends more teacher involvement in many decisions that effect them and their students, as well as measuring progress against each school's own performance in preceding years. (LMS)

Without good schools, none of America's hopes can be fulfilled. Since 1983, school reform has been at the top of the national agenda; however, there is a disturbing gap between rhetoric and results. After travelling to some of the nation's largest cities and interviewing administrators and teachers, Carnegie Foundation representatives determined the following priorities for improving urban schools: (1) affirm that every student can succeed; (2) build an effective governance arrangement for urban schools that ends excessively centralized, bureaucratic control; (3) introduce at every school a comprehensive system of renewal that emphasizes preschool and early education, breaks schools into smaller units, defines curricular goals, ensures flexible scheduling, and improves facilities; and (4) create a network of support beyond the school that empowers parents, and involves community, business and government participation. A new National Urban Schools Program is proposed which would: (1) incrementally increase funding of Head Start so that all eligible children are served by the year 2000; (2) increase the appropriation for federal child nutrition programs; (3) each year increase the funding for Chapter 1 of the Education Consolidation and Improvement Act by 5 percent; (4) add to the Education Consolidation and Improvement Act a provision enabling poor parents to place their children in afternoon and summer enrichment programs; (5) make summer fellowships available for teachers; (6) make available to school districts low interest loans to improve school facilities; (7) encourage schools to introduce new curriculum or scheduling arrangements; and (8) encourage cooperation between schools and postsecondary institutions. Data are presented in six tables. (BJV)

This annual report of the Carnegie Foundation sets forth the goals the foundation has established for the improvement of education: (1) an urgent call to national action in school reform; (2) a commitment to the disadvantaged; (3) a crusade to strengthen teaching; (4) state standards, with leadership at the local school; (5) a quality curriculum; and (6) an effective way to monitor results. The report of the foundation's treasurer provides comprehensive information on the income and expenditures for the year. The Carnegie philanthropies are briefly described. (JD)

This annual report of the Carnegie Foundation is dedicated to the work of Ernest L. Boyer, former President of the Foundation. It includes a detailed summary of Boyer's accomplishments as a leader in American education and his specific accomplishments as President of the Carnegie Foundation. A bibliography of books written by Ernest L. Boyer is included as is a list of books published or undertaken by the Carnegie Foundation during his presidency (1981-1997). The Foundation's annual report contains tabular financial reports including: 10-year record of investments, expenditures in retirement allowances and widows' pensions, the auditor's report with statement of financial position, statement of activities, statements of cash flows, schedule of functional expenses, schedule of educational and research expenditures, and schedule of investments (broken down into common stock, fixed income, and short-term investments). Other Carnegie philanthropies are briefly described including the Carnegie Institution of Washington and the public library buildings donated by Andrew Carnegie. (JLS)

Issues in the current school choice debate are addressed in the seven chapters of this report. Chapter 1 offers definitions of the various types of choice and a review of literature. Chapter 2 presents findings of interviews with 1,000 parents of children attending public schools, students, teachers, administrators, and state officers from 50 states. Although the data indicate that school choice, especially districtwide programs, can stimulate school renewal, choice alone is unlikely to renew the nation's schools. Chapter 3 describes three district choice programs cited as successful: those in East Harlem in New York City; Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Montclair, New Jersey. The fourth chapter examines the problems and successes experienced by various state choice programs. Statewide programs often fail to provide equal access, effective outreach, and fair funding. The Milwaukee program, the only publicly financed private-school choice plan, is described in chapter 5. A conclusion is that the program has failed to demonstrate that vouchers can, in and of themselves, spark school improvement. Chapter 6 proposes a search for common ground in the highly polarized choice debate. The final chapter advocates following the American tradition of focusing not just on the empowerment of individuals, but also on the building of community. Eleven tables, chapter endnotes, and an index are included. Appendices contain survey results and technical notes. (LMI)

This report is based on a national survey of 22,000 public school teachers. The report reveals a growing gap between the school and the home, and the majority of teachers report that the willingness of parents to be involved in their children's education falls below their expectations. In addition to the reporting of national trends, the report allows an opportunity for state-by-state comparison of teacher attitudes on a broad range of topics: current teaching assignments; public school enrollment trends; student achievement and growth; expenditures for education; teacher evaluation; perspectives on methods and curriculum; standards for students; teacher preparation; assessment of education officials; and job satisfaction and morale. It is noted in the foreword to the report that"perhaps most significant in this survey is the frustration teachers feel about their powerlessness in teaching...the majority of teachers are not...asked to particiate in such crucial matters as teacher evaluation, staff development, school budget, and student promotion and retention policies." Technical notes and 83 tables are provided. (JD)

This report by the Curriculum Task Force represents its considered conclusion about general reform (K-12) of the social studies curriculum in the United States. It presents a balanced and comprehensive curriculum program adapted to the needs of present day society and suggests direction for the future. Part 1 discusses the recommended social studies curriculum for grades K-12. Part 2 discusses the research basis for curriculum choice. Part 3 contains essays prepared by representatives of the professional associations holding membership in the Social Science Association's Task Force for Pre-College Education. These essays provide a perspective from the following fields: (1) anthropology; (2) economics; (3) U.S. history; (4) world history; (5) political science; (6) psychology; and (7) sociology. The characteristics of a social studies curriculum for the 21st century as set forth in this report include the following: (1) It must instill a clear understanding of the roles of citizens in a democracy and provide opportunities for active, engaged participation in civic, cultural, and volunteer activities. (2) It must provide consistent and cumulative learning from kindergarten through grade 12. (3) History and geography should provide the matrix for social studies with concepts from political science, economics, and other social sciences integrated throughout the curriculum. (4) A global approach should be taken, for a curriculum that focuses on one or two major civilizations is neither adequate nor complete. (5) Integration of other subject matter with social studies should be encouraged. (6) Students must be made aware that they have the capacity to shape the future. (7) Teaching strategies should help students become both independent and cooperative learners who develop skills of problem solving, decision making, negotiation, and conflict resolution. (8) Learning materials must incorporate a rich mix of written matter, audiovisual materials, computer programs, and items of material culture. (JB)