All Resources, Courses, and Services:
Introduction to Networked Improvement Basics℠
Introduction to Networked Improvement Basics℠ is an online, introductory course for individuals and teams. Grounded in a case-based simulation, participants gain familiarity with the tools and practices of improvement science. This course is fee-based.
Evidence for Improvement℠ Workshop
Effective use of evidence can significantly accelerate an improvement network’s learning. This workshop introduces participants to the Evidence for Improvement framework and related tools to understand a network’s working theory of improvement, functioning as a learning organization, and environmental contexts. The framework spells out how the use of evidence across improvement domains can advance a network’s efforts. This course is fee-based.
Improvement Reviews
Improvement Reviews are structured sessions for improvement teams and networks to ask for and receive feedback on specific aspects of their work. Scheduled at intervals during an improvement effort, reviews provide an opportunity for presenting teams to reflect on their work and to invite feedback from reviewers with outside perspective and relevant expertise related to specific problems of practice.
Evidence for Improvement℠: An Integrated Analytic Approach for Supporting Networks in Education
This paper offers an integrated perspective on how evidence can be marshaled by network leaders and their analytic partners to inform improvement networks in advancing productive change.
Improvement Science Basics
This workshop session, offered as a preconference session each spring at the Carnegie Summit on Improvement in Education, provides an introduction to the dispositions, core concepts, and tools of improvement science in education. This workshop is fee-based.
Learning to Improve: How America’s Schools Can Get Better at Getting Better
Learning to Improve shows how a disciplined approach to inquiry, combined with the power of social learning in a network, can accelerate improvement in education. The text introduces Six Improvement Principles that organize the approach, and illustrates them in action with examples from documented improvement efforts.
Transforming Educational Systems To Continuously Improve
This 12-week course, designed for educational leaders in pK-12 systems, introduces three domains of leadership for system transformation that support building organizations that serve all students equitably and are capable of sustaining continuous improvement.
Teaching Commons
The Carnegie Teaching Commons is a searchable collection of instructional resources for the teaching of improvement science and networked improvement communities. The Commons is designed for use by coaches, facilitators and leaders who are developing the dispositions and skills of others to use improvement science and learn together in networks.
90-Day Cycle Handbook
90-Day Cycles are a structured method to develop and test new processes, tools, practices or knowledge frameworks in support of improvement work. This handbook details how to plan and execute a 90-Day Cycle and includes examples from practice.
Facilitating Improvement Teams℠
Facilitating Improvement Teams℠ is an intermediate-level course that engages coordinators, facilitators, and those who support improvement teams in hands-on, practical learning experiences. Activities focus on building participants’ skills in facilitating small improvement teams through cycles of testing and learning. This course is fee-based.
A Framework for Scaling for Equity
This report seeks to help school district leaders and improvement teams define what it means to scale for equity. It presents a scaling-for-equity framework informed by the experiences of 10 research-practice partnerships (RPPs). The framework and accompanying tools are designed to (1) help improvement teams navigate their scaling-for-equity journey and (2) support school district leaders striving to transform their communities’ public education systems into equitable ones.
Improvement in Action
Improvement in Action highlights six examples of rigorous, high-quality improvement work in districts, schools, and professional development networks across the country. These examples provide evidence of how different organizations put the six improvement principles introduced in Learning to Improve into practice in order to realize significant results for the students they serve.
Improvement Science in Practice: Finding Solutions Through Iterative Testing℠
Improvement Science in Practice: Finding Solutions Through Iterative Testing℠ is an intermediate-level course for individuals and teams seeking to strengthen their ability to learn through disciplined, rigorous inquiry cycles. This course is fee-based.
Learning to Improve Glossary
This glossary organizes a selection of key terms used in the book, Learning to Improve: How America’s Schools Can Get Better at Getting Better, that have formal meaning.
NILS™: Networked Improvement Learning and Support platform
The Networked Improvement Learning and Support (NILS™) platform supports social learning and improvement testing within networked improvement communities (NICs). Purpose-built to support improvement work across a network, the technology supports bringing together different forms of expertise and allows improvers to share and build on each others’ learning. This service requires subscription.
Transforming Educational Systems Toward Continuous Improvement: A Reflection Guide for K–12 Executive Leaders
This Reflection Guide summarizes the findings of a Carnegie Foundation project to understand how executive leaders in education transform their organizations to be capable of producing new levels of system performance through the use of improvement science principles. It includes questions to support leaders to reflect on their own practice in three domains of leadership for system transformation. This course is fee-based.
The Social Structure of Networked Improvement Communities: Cultivating the Emergence of a Scientific-Professional Learning Community
This paper describes a framework for network development. The framework describes the technical core of improvement activity as well as how networks structure roles and relationships and foster norms and identities that form the social structure of the community working and learning together.
Using Data for Improvement
This workshop session, offered as a pre-conference session each spring at the Carnegie Summit on Improvement in Education, provides an introduction to approaches for using measurement and data to support improvement. This workshop is fee-based.
Getting Better at Getting Better: Improvement Dispositions in Education
This paper summarizes findings of an exploratory study to understand important dispositions common among educational improvers. Drawing on interviews with educators involved with Networked Improvement Communities, the authors identify six dispositions of improvers, as well as organizational resources and conditions that can foster them.
Developing Improvement Dispositions
This session, recorded for on-demand viewing as part of the 2021 Summit on Improvement in Education, presents six dispositions of educational improvers, as well as organizational resources and conditions that can foster them.
NIC Initiation Hub Self-Assessment
This self-assessment tool enables network initiation or hub teams to assess their readiness to launch a networked improvement community. It can help teams to identify strengths as well as opportunities to build capability and internal capacity, or where external support may be needed in order to successfully launch a NIC.
Categories of improvement coaching dilemmas
Improvement coaches encounter common kinds of challenges as they work with teams towards different improvement aims. Four categories of challenges, drawn from interviews with improvement coaches about their practice, can be used to understand the specific needs of an improvement team in order to help that team move forward. Resources include additional questions that can help a coach reflect on their practice.
Coaching PDSA cycles
These resources focus on how coaches can help teams build efficient and effective inquiry routines using PDSA cycles. Materials include a tool to help a coach to reflect on a PDSA artifact as well as short video clips.
Introduction to Improvement Science: A Learning-By-Doing Simulation Facilitator’s Handbook
This facilitator’s handbook and related teaching materials prepare an experienced improver to lead a group through a case-based simulation of an extended improvement effort. Participants experience an improvement journey from initial problem identification through to seeing measurable improvement and sharing effective changes through simulation activities.
Hub Leadership Capabilities
Hub leadership teams support the development of a NIC and its ability to function as a scientific, professional learning community that is continuously learning from its efforts. These resources include a framework for understanding the different processes that hub leaders manage as well as tools for a hub team to organize its work in service of the network.
Developing NIC Hub Self-Assessment
Network hub teams can use this self-assessment tool to identify strengths and areas for growth as they support the development of a NIC as a scientific-professional learning community. The tool describes seven domains of effort that are essential for operating a developing networked improvement community through its first 1-3 years after launch.
Developmental Progressions
The Developmental Progressions Framework describes aspects of a partnership between a school district and university that can be used to set goals and identify next actions to deepen and strengthen the collaborative relationship.
How a City Learned to Improve Its Schools
How a City Learned to Improve Its Schools offers comprehensive analysis of the astonishing changes that elevated the Chicago public school system from one of the worst in the nation to one of the most improved.
Improving America’s Schools Together
Improving America’s Schools Together: How District-University Partnerships and Continuous Improvement Can Transform Education includes stories, examples, and tools from 11 district-university partnerships using improvement science as a shared method to advance local priorities for students and educators.