Improving America's Schools Together: How District-University Partnerships and Continuous Improvement Can Transform Education

Improving America's Schools Together: How District-University Partnerships and Continuous Improvement Can Transform Education is the first definitive text on continuous improvement in school district-university partnerships, covering improvement methods, theory, research, and real cases across the United States with practical improvement tools that can be adapted to any setting. Through an array of in-depth stories, this book demonstrates how improvement science-as a shared method-can help universities, districts, and schools foster leaders and educators and enhance students' learning and opportunities.

Louis M. Gomez, Betsy Hargrove, Brian Harvey, Marni Herrington, Zipporah Hightower,

Manuelito Biag, Regina Biggs,

David G. Imig, Janice Jackson, Julia Jacobsen, Sandra Lochhead, Peter Martinez, David Mayrowetz, Tania McKey, Kara Miley-Libby, Peter Moyi, Christine M. Neumerski, Margaret Terry Orr, Deborah S. Peterson, Meisha Porter, W. Bradley Roberson, David Rock, Natasha Saunders, Farnoosh Shahrokhi, Claire Silva, Jean Snell, Denise A. Soares, Elizabeth Leisy Stosich, Nicole L. Thompson,

Randy Hitz,

Steve Tozer, Samantha Viano, Sam Whalen, Tinkhani Ushe White, Paige Whitlock, Paul Zavitkovsky About the Editors Louis M. Gomez works to help educators take a new perspective on design and educational improvement by catalyzing long-term, cooperative initiatives. The work gains its power through highly focused collaboratives called Networked Improvement Communities. He is a Professor of Education (and Information Studies) at the University of California, Los Angeles. Since 2008 he has also served as a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Gomez received a B.A. degree in psychology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from UC Berkeley. Manuelito Biag currently serves as the managing director of the Center for Postsecondary Innovation at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. In this role, he leads an international portfolio of projects aimed at increasing students' social and economic mobility. He also serves as senior associate and provides instruction, coaching, and research support in the area of networked improvement science. Prior, he served as senior researcher at the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities at the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. Biag earned a Ph.D. in education policy from UC Davis. David Imig holds emeritus status from the Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership program at the University of Maryland at College Park. He served as president and chief executive officer of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) from 1980-2005. He is past chair of the National Policy Board for Educational Administration and the National Society for the Study of Education. He helped to establish the Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED), serving as chair of the Board of Directors from 2010-2020. He serves as a senior fellow for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He holds three academic degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and an honorary doctorate from Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts. He is the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Universities Council for the Education of Teachers in the UK. Randy Hitz is Dean Emeritus of the College of Education at Portland State University. His higher education administrative experience spans three decades and includes dean positions at Portland State, the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and Montana State University. He currently serves as a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching where he has been part of the iLEAD project for five years. Hitz served as Chair of the American Association for Colleges of Teacher Education and he chaired the Council for Accreditation of Education Professionals (CAEP) Commission as well as participating on CAEP's Board of Directors. He earned a Ph.D. from Indiana State University. Steve Tozer is Professor emeritus and past university scholar in educational policy studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), where he was the founding director of the UIC Center for Urban Education Leadership. His collaborations with colleagues from UIC and Chicago Public Schools were continuously funded for 18 years by numerous foundations and the US Department of Education. He is the lead author of a textbook, School and Society, Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, 8th Edition (McGraw-Hill, 2020), and lead editor of The Handbook of Research in Social Foundations of Education (Routledge, 2011). Tozer earned his Ph.D. in educational policy studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.