National Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools

What are the components of effective high schools? What types of programs, practices, and processes support these components? How can districts scale up these components to less effective high schools?

These are the questions around which the National Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools (NCSU) is working. Funded by the Institute of Education Sciences and the U.S. Department of Education, NCSU focuses on developing a new approach to scaling and sustaining effective high school practices. Our approach has three main principles:

• Develop an innovation that is built on core elements of effective practices identified in the district where the improvement work is occurring.
• Use a strategy of continuous improvement to facilitate effective implementation.
• Establish a research-practice partnership where practices are co-developed by district and school design teams that include teachers, administrators, school support personnel, and researchers.

NCSU has an ambitious and exciting research agenda. We invite you to learn more about NCSU through our website.

We are beyond excited to announce our newest book that describes our network-based improvement approach and tells the stories of the educators with whom we co-developed a set of systemic practices to connect high school students academic and social-emotional learning.

Listen to Dr. Cannata talk about NCSU’s research on developing student ownership and responsibility.

Watch a video on how NCSU works with partner districts to build capacity and local commitment.

Watch a video on what we’ve learned through NCSU.