Projects

DataUse

Data use for educational improvement is studied under many guises (e.g., data use, data-based decision-making, data-driven decision-making, evidence use), all with the same intention: providing districts, schools, and educators with better information that can help educate children.  If offered in a useful form, such data can help teachers, principals and other educational personnel learn more about their students, improve their teaching craft, and ultimately impact a variety of educational outcomes.

Centers

Southwest Center for Accelerated Schools

Accelerated Schools are students, parents, teachers, staff, administrators and other school community members who are striving to develop the best school for every child. The overall goal of Accelerated Schools is to create the school we want for our own children. If a school is not good enough for our own children, it is not good enough for any child.

Study of High School Restructuring

The Houston A+ Challenge (HA+C) received funding from the Carnegie Corporation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, supplemented by the Annenberg Foundation and the Brown Foundation, to support a 5-year initiative to work with 24 large high schools in the Houston Independent School District engaged in a student-focused, whole-school change effort. The initiative, called the Study of High School Restructuring, redesigns high schools into small, theme-based academies to produce graduates ready for the demands of the 21st century.

Stupski Project

The Stupski Foundation has partnered with the University of Texas at Austin. Both entities will be working with selected districts across the nation. The purpose of the course/project is to develop a deep understanding of what it takes to significantly increase student academic achievement and close achievement gap. Research of district reform will be a focus along with examples of districts that have attained significant results. The Foundation's organizational assessment instrument will provide a structure for understanding the reform from a district perspective. Research- based core essential elements in the organizational assessment provide a way of thinking about and understanding the changes that must take place for a district to be high performing.

Texas Center for Education Policy

A central purpose of the center is to bring researchers together whose work has direct bearing on policy issues of the day and to in turn bring them together with the larger stakeholder education communities statewide. Internally, we have begun to accomplish this through a series of highly successful policy brown bags as noted herein. Several of us have also been involved in the legislative session, advising policymakers on dropout prevention, student assessment, and teacher quality. Soon we will be posting policy briefs on our legislative-related work and activities.

The Higher Education Administration Student/Professional Association

As the name suggests, HEASPA is an association of higher education administration students studying at the masters and doctoral levels in the Higher Education Administration Program of the Education Administration Department at The University of Texas at Austin.

In an effort to foster relationships and communication among students, faculty, administration, and the profession, we have joined together as a group to exchange ideas, share resources, and develop our academic and professional careers. We welcome all participation.