The Ask A REL Reference Desk provides education stakeholders from the Northwest region with prompt, authoritative, and customized answers to research and policy questions. On a regular basis, we share our responses to questions from the field.

Designed by practitioners for practitioners, this institute provides programmatic tools and strategies to strengthen high school redesign efforts.

Our experienced team helps schools and districts craft a winning strategy for school improvement. We can help you assess high-need areas to target, identify research-based strategies to address them, integrate individual programs into a systemic strategy for improvement, and plan for sustainability.

This summary defines and reviews research on the effectiveness of small learning communities, and organizes the practices effective communities use into five domains of best practice. The article outlines a process of continuous program improvement that schools use to move their small learning communities closer to these best practices.