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This book helps students understand the functional, comprehensive role of conceptual frameworks in organizing and guiding their empirical research.

Designed for novice as well as more experienced researchers, Reason & Rigor by Sharon M. Ravitch and Matthew Riggan presents conceptual frameworks as a mechanism for aligning literature review, research design, and methodology. The book explores the conceptual framework—defined as both a process and a product—that helps to direct and ground researchers as they work through common research challenges. Focusing on published studies on a range of topics and employing both quantitative and qualitative methods, the updated Second Edition features two new chapters and clearly communicates the processes of developing and defining conceptual frameworks.

The purpose of this exploratory study is to examine the use of interim assessments and the policy supports that promote use to improve instruction, focusing on elementary school mathematics. The authors use the term "interim assessments" to refer to assessments that a) evaluate student knowledge and skills, typically within a limited time frame; and b) the results of which can be easily aggregated and analyzed across classrooms, schools, or even districts. Drawing on in-depth case studies of nine elementary schools located in two school districts, this study addresses four questions: (1) What policy supports at the school and district levels enhance the use of interim assessments to change instruction? How does instructional support, the nature of professional development, the sophistication of local data systems, and the school- and teacher-level incentives for improved instruction affect teachers' use of interim assessment data?; (2) How do elementary school teachers, individually and collectively, learn from interim assessment results in mathematics and apply that knowledge to instructional decisions about content, pedagogy, and working with individual students?; (3) In what ways are interim assessments situated within the wider context of teachers' formative assessment practices and tools?; and (4) What is the relationship among teacher capacity, analysis of assessment information, and teaching practice? This paper synthesizes the study's findings and discusses implications for the design of more effective interim assessment policies and practices. Each chapter contains figures, footnotes and references.

Leading school change is a challenging endeavor. Successful leadership requires strategic and sustained effort, particularly in the shifting and uncertain environment of urban public schools. The concept of distributed leadership--in which multiple actors tackle the challenges of school leadership in concert--is a promising way to strengthen professional practice and thereby improve the educational experiences of all students. The Annenberg Distributed Leadership (DL) project was one of the first efforts in the nation to deliberately take on the challenge of designing and implementing a concerted effort to build distributed leadership capacity in a diverse set of urban schools to improve the quality of teaching and learning. The DL project featured the careful selection of leadership team members to identify and lead instructional improvement efforts; ample professional development to build cohesive teams and help members understand the motivational, psychological, and pedagogical aspects of advocating instructional change; resources to apply to the task; and ongoing school-based coaching to guide leadership team efforts. This report describes the Consortium for Policy Research in Education's mixed-method evaluation of the DL project. The evaluation featured a cluster randomized control trial, where schools first agreed to participate in the study, and then were chosen by lottery to participate in the DL project or serve in the comparison group. Overall there were 16 DL schools and 21 comparison sites in the evaluation. Central evaluation findings included: (1) The DL project successfully identified and developed leadership teams that were significantly higher functioning than were leadership teams in the comparison schools; (2) Principals and team members forged new working relationships that productively expanded the leadership capacity in the participating schools; (3) Teachers developed leadership capacity and took on leadership roles on their teams and with their colleagues; and (4) Team members worked strategically to change instruction through a variety of approaches and targeted a variety of areas that they determined to be their school's greatest needs. The report concludes the DL project demonstrates that an intensive effort to influence and expand the leadership capacity of schools can have a positive impact on leadership practice, leadership team functioning, and support for instructional improvement. It further suggests that distributed leadership might be best thought of not as a reform in itself, but rather as a means of implementing reform. "Demographics of Distributed Leadership Schools" are appended.

The College and Career Readiness Standards, referred to as the Common Core Learning Standards (CCLS) in New York City, are increasingly the focus of educational reform efforts across the United States. Each year for the past several years, the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) has created a set of focusing expectations for schools in order to guide their engagement with the CCLS. Evaluation of CCLS implementation in New York City in 2011-12 allowed the authors to examine how a diverse sample of 16 elementary and middle schools engaged with the Citywide Instructional Expectations (CIEs). The sample of schools came from all five boroughs across New York City and represented a range of student demographics and performance. Through these analyses, patterns emerged that seemed to explain how different schools interpreted and implemented the CIEs. In this report the authors trace the ways that conservation-oriented and transformation-oriented schools engaged with different components of the CIEs. The authors found that the different orientations led schools to engage in looking at student work differently, to have different experiences with task selection and implementation, and to take different learning away from their experiences. Overall, the authors determined that schools with a transformation-oriented perspective made more progress towards the kinds of practices that will be required in the coming decade. These findings have important implications for schools and districts across the nation as they seek to grapple with Standards implementation.