One of the great challenges now facing education reformers in the United States is how to devise a consistent and intelligent framework for instruction that will work across the nation’s notoriously fragmented and politically conflicted school systems. Various programs have tried to do that, but only a few have succeeded. Improvement by Design looks at three different programs, seeking to understand why two of them—America’s Choice and Success for All—worked, and why the third—Accelerated Schools Project—did not. The authors identify four critical puzzles that the successful programs were able to solve: design, implementation, improvement, and sustainability. Pinpointing the specific solutions that clearly improved instruction, they identify the key elements that all successful reform programs share. Offering urgently needed guidance for state and local school systems as they attempt to respond to future reform proposals, Improvement by Design gets America one step closer to truly successful education systems.

vi The process is important! I learned this lesson the hard way during my previous existence working as a design engineer with PA Consulting Group's Cambridge Technology Centre. One of my earliest assignments involved the development of a piece of labo- tory automation equipment for a major European pharmaceutical manufacturer.Two things stick in my mind from those early days – first, that the equipment was always to be ready for delivery in three weeks and,second,that being able to write well structured Pascal was not sufficient to deliver reliable software performance. Delivery was ultimately six months late,the project ran some sixty percent over budget and I gained my first promotion to Senior Engineer. At the time it puzzled me that I had been unable to predict the John Clarkson real effort required to complete the automation project – I had Reader in Engineering Design, genuinely believed that the project would be finished in three Director, Cambridge Engineering weeks.It was some years later that I discovered Kenneth Cooper's Design Centre papers describing the Rework Cycle and realised that I had been the victim of “undiscovered rework”.I quickly learned that project plans were not just inaccurate,as most project managers would attest,but often grossly misleading,bearing little resemblance to actual development practice.

At the heart of the effort to enact and scale up successful school reforms is the need for more robust links between research and practice. One promising approach is design development, a methodology widely used in other fields and only recently adapted to education, which offers a disciplined process for identifying practical problems, assessing evidence of outcomes, accounting for variability in implementation and results, and establishing a foundation for broader understanding of the problem and proposed solutions. This exciting new book provides a practical guide for education leaders who are seeking to address issues of equity in their schools and want to pursue this approach. The book provides a step-by-step description of the process, augmented by case studies of four education leaders: Christine, a middle school principal who is concerned with the volume of disciplinary referrals in her school; Michelle, an elementary school principal who wants to address achievement gaps; Eric, an assistant superintendent who wants to improve the quality of principals’ instructional feedback to teachers; and Nora, a high school principal who is concerned about the use of racial and homophobic slurs in the hallways. The book follows each of these leaders as they formulate and refine interventions to address these problems. Design-Based School Improvement also includes a series of “excursions into theory” that discuss the research basis for design-based improvement. The author—a leading thinker about policy implementation and school reform—shows a profound appreciation for the complexity of work in schools and the deep and sustained thinking entailed in undertaking productive change. By bringing theory to life and putting it in the hands of skilled practitioners, this book promises to become an invaluable resource for education leaders seeking to solve problems of equity and social justice in schools.

In this practical resource, The authors maintain that to effect real reform today's educators must understand how leading and managing for instructional improvement gets done in their school and in turn use their diagnoses as the basis for mindful design and redesign.

The authors show how school leaders can use "power tools" to coordinate essential school improvement processes, improve student achievement, and create more effective schools.

What is understanding and how does it differ from knowledge? How can we determine the big ideas worth understanding? Why is understanding an important teaching goal, and how do we know when students have attained it? How can we create a rigorous and engaging curriculum that focuses on understanding and leads to improved student performance in today's high-stakes, standards-based environment? Authors Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe answer these and many other questions in this second edition of Understanding by Design. Drawing on feedback from thousands of educators around the world who have used the UbD framework since its introduction in 1998, the authors have greatly revised and expanded their original work to guide educators across the K-16 spectrum in the design of curriculum, assessment, and instruction. With an improved UbD Template at its core, the book explains the rationale of backward design and explores in greater depth the meaning of such key ideas as essential questions and transfer tasks. Readers will learn why the familiar coverage- and activity-based approaches to curriculum design fall short, and how a focus on the six facets of understanding can enrich student learning. With an expanded array of practical strategies, tools, and examples from all subject areas, the book demonstrates how the research-based principles of Understanding by Design apply to district frameworks as well as to individual units of curriculum. Combining provocative ideas, thoughtful analysis, and tested approaches, this new edition of Understanding by Design offers teacher-designers a clear path to the creation of curriculum that ensures better learning and a more stimulating experience for students and teachers alike.

Despite good intentions, the environment within which people work can unfortunately encourage at-risk behavior. Both formal systems (e.g., incentives, measurement systems) and informal systems (e.g., peer pressure, safety interactions) have tremendous influence on safety-related behaviors at all levels of the organization. The more leaders and safety professionals can accurately assess the behavioral impact of formal and informal systems, the better able they are to adjust their systems to improve safety performance and safety culture. Understanding behavior scientifically is key. This book will demonstrate how the science of behavior can be used to create safe habits and assess and improve organizational systems. The result is dramatic improvement in all aspects of safety.