The State's Role in Improving Low-Performing Schools Through Restructuring

Grants have been awarded to the State Boards of Education in Illinois, Ohio, and West Virginia by NASBE to help develop a cohesive set of turnaround policies for those states’ lowest and chronically underperforming high schools. The $10,000 leadership grants are part of NASBE’s High School Redesign Initiative, which is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

For all member states, NASBE offers free technical assistance to assist state’s efforts around low- and under-performing high schools. For more information on how to obtain this technical assistance, please contact Yen Chau at (703) 403-4000 x 1105 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

The grant project builds on a recent report published by NASBE, Meeting the Challenge: The State’s Role in Improving Low-performing Schools Through Restructuring, which found that while the No Child Left Behind Act requires states to intervene in an ever increasing number of schools identified as low-performing, states have only recently begun assembling the research, personnel, policies, and resources to fulfill that mandate.

The report, Meeting the Challenge: The State’s Role in Improving Low-performing Schools Through Restructuring, can be ordered online at:

The State's Role in Improving Low-Performing Schools Through Restructuring

or by calling by calling NASBE's Publication Line at: 800.220.5183.

Learning to Work, Working to Learn

October 2008

Career and technical education, or CTE, has its roots in vocational education programs that were traditionally skill-based and non-academic—shop, home economics, and cos- metology. But while vocational education trained students for jobs, CTE prepares students for careers. In recent years, CTE has morphed the traditional focus on technical skills for the non-college bound student into a 21st century version of workforce preparation—one that focuses on career and workplace skills as well as academic learning. On a broader scale, CTE is fast becoming an integral part of education reform discussions nationwide.

Every teacher learns early in their preparation to recognize and seize the instructional moment; that unique opportunity when circumstances permit you to teach students about something special and important, even if it is not in the day’s lesson plan or a part of the curriculum. It is the paramount opportunity to teach an object lesson that students won’t soon forget.

The 2008 presidential election gave us those teachable moments, some that will not be replicated in our lifetime.  Yes, it gave us the predictable opportunities to demonstrate how important reading and comprehension are to understanding what each candidate proposed and embraced for our nation’s future. It showed us the application of mathematical principles through poll numbers and the all important 270 electoral college votes needed for election. Regrettably it often illustrated the power of words to distort or hurt, while at the same time underscoring the right each of us has to disagree in a democratic society without fear of reprisal.