Topic: Improvement Science

  • September 3, 2015

    Lessons from Paper Airplanes

    By Melrose Huang

    Working to reliably land paper airplanes, educators, researchers, and other workshop participants experienced how improvement science offers a different way to solve problems and collect data.

  • August 18, 2015

    Why a NIC?

    By Paul LeMahieu

    Organizing in networks is not a new idea. But the joining together of improvement science and networks affords great promise for accelerating educators’ efforts to improve our nation’s schools. Learn more about networked improvement communities.

  • August 4, 2015

    It’s Complex

    By Louis Gomez

    In education, we often talk of confronting complicated problems, when they are truly complex problems. The difference between complicated and complex truly matters in how we works towards our end goals. It is time we approach complex problems as complex.

  • July 21, 2015

    Improvement Discipline in Practice

    By Alicia Grunow

    Trying to improve practice is part of most educators practices, but what if we moved from trying to get better to getting better at getting better. Improvement science offers a method and set of tools to systematically build the know-how to reach our goals

  • July 2, 2015

    How High Tech High Is Using Improvement Science

    By Lillian Kivel

    In a recent article, High Tech High faculty and administrators highlight how they used the tools and mindsets of improvement science to increase the number of African American and Latino male students who directly attend 4-year institutions.

  • June 15, 2015

    Using the Wisdom of Educators

    By Gary Otake

    Recently, The Education Trust Writer-in-residence Karin Chenoweth wrote a review of Learning to Improve: How America’s Schools Can Get Better at Getting Better in The Huffington Post. Chenoweth notes the inability of education to learn from the collective knowledge and experience of educators. Drawing on the main ideas of the…

  • May 18, 2015

    The Problem with Solutions

    By Lillian Kivel

    Improvement science relies on an understanding of the problem before creating solutions. Groups have found three key things helped them gain clarity on the problems and make the knowledge explicit, helping them design solutions with users, data, and will in mind.

  • May 10, 2015

    Avoiding the Trap of the “Iron Law”

    By Corey Donahue

    A recent post in the Health Affairs Blog discusses the challenges of scaling interventions, a problem known as the “Iron Law” of evaluation. The piece outlines four reasons why the “Iron Law” occurs and how we can reduce its effect.

  • March 2, 2015

    Introducing Learning to Improve

    By Corey Donahue

    On March 3, Learning to Improve, a new book by Anthony S. Bryk, Louis M. Gomez, Alicia Grunow, and Paul G. LeMahieu, will be released. The book outlines how Networked Improvement Communities (NICs) offer a new model for improving our schools.

  • February 18, 2015

    Problem-Centered Policy Making

    By Sarah McKay

    The Carnegie Foundation hosted an expert convening to focus on improving Title II by using improvement science tools to deepen our understanding of the problem the act is trying to solve.