This chapter examines six externally developed ‘Instructional Improvement Programmes’ in the United States which have been subjects of a sustained programme of intervention studies. All six programmes sought to change instructional practice in both English Language Arts and mathematics and were adopted by schools both as a result of government incentives and normal ‘market’ processes. All six were externally evaluated by carefully measuring patterns of instructional practice and student achievement in order to assess the extent to which the programmes succeeded in changing teaching and improving student learning. Some programmes changed teaching and improved student learning, some changed teaching but did not improve student learning and some programmes did not change teaching or improve student learning. One proposition drawn from these evaluations is that successful external programmes of instructional improvement have well-specified designs for instruction and provide strong pressures and supports to encourage faithful implementation of these instructional designs in classrooms.

The common practice of disaggregating student data by singular demographic fields such as race, English learner, or disability status can lead to flawed conclusions or reinforce harmful stereotypes. The Academic Support Index (ASI) provides an alternative lens for looking at student data by considering the interaction of seven common demographic fields and their relationship to academic achievement. The ASI has a strong association with outcomes including standardized assessments, grade point average, and postsecondary outcomes. This chapter will provide a history of the development of the ASI and its statistical foundation. Additionally, examples of how the ASI has been used to analyze data, identify students for support, design interventions, and evaluate programs are provided. The ASI has the potential to be an important tool in addressing both achievement and opportunity gaps.

This chapter addresses the book’s questions about how different models of CLIL can be implemented and why school leaders adapt their curriculum to include CLIL projects, set against the absence of a national policy for modern languages and a resulting paucity of cross-curricular language learning in the secondary sector. I begin by reviewing a range of models undertaken in schools before focusing on three more substantial models in this study and exploring school leaders’ rationale for CLIL and how they implemented the approach in their school. It draws on findings from the empirical research study referred to in Chapter 2, which investigated the extent to which CLIL promotes learner motivation in England and explored the transferability of CLIL to other schools. Leaders’ perceptions of, confidence in and professional commitment to CLIL in three contrasting models and settings are explored.