Solving the puzzle of school district turnaround to bring about system-wide—rather than school-by-school—improvement has the potential to dramatically raise education outcomes. This timely and significant book focuses on systemic approaches to improving education by targeting the school district as the unit of reform and argues for new theoretical and methodological strategies. Facing higher demands for performance and accountability, administrators and policy makers across the globe have struggled to reverse declining school outcomes, often selecting strategies with limited empirical basis. Despite ongoing calls for performance-based accountability, little remains known about the interplay among accountability, organizational improvement, and district underperformance. This volume explores and spotlights the empirical, theoretical, and methodological innovations that have focused on persistently struggling districts and provide much-needed practical information, based on high-quality research, for all who care about improving education outcomes.
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