2026  – Over the previous years, our analyses of prevailing school improvement legislation, planning, and literature have delineated fundamental deficiencies, especially with respect to enhancing equity of opportunity and closing the achievement gap.

As schools continue to recover from the pandemic, it is essential to move forward in making fundamental changes.

With this in mind, a major facet of our work continues to focus school improvement policy and planning on:

(1) moving school improvement from a two- to a three-component policy and practice framework (That is, expanding from a primary focus on instruction and management/government concerns to fully integrate a third primary component directly concerned with improving how schools address barriers to learning and teaching.)

(2) integrating a deep understanding of motivation – especially intrinsic motivation and personalized teaching

(3) reframing of remediation and special education emphasizing personalized special assistance that is applied in and out of classrooms and practiced in a sequential and hierarchical manner.

(4) transforming student and learning supports into a unified, comprehensive, and equitable system designed to address barriers to learning and teaching and re-engage disconnected students and families.

(5) reworking the leadership structure for whole school improvement

(6) enhancing school-community collaboration by establishing a collaborative operational infrastructure that enables weaving together resources to address shared concerns

(7) expanding the framework for school accountability

(8) providing guidance for substantive, scalable, and sustainable systemic changes