UC San Diego

The difference in performance between students of color and their white counterparts, better known as the academic achievement gap, in America has prompted many scholars, practitioners, and researchers to seek solutions that will help eliminate it. Researchers are beginning to investigate underlying social networks and tenets of organizational learning for the purpose of gaining insight into structures that support, constrain, or have no impact on the diffusion of research evidence within schools and school districts. This study investigated the processes two high schools in corrective action, sanctioned under the No Child Left Behind Act, engaged in to identify problems and solutions, and how these schools defined, acquired, used, and diffused research evidence in service reform. There has been very limited research done this area. Future research efforts that continue to investigate the convergence of research evidence, organizational learning, and social networks in school districts across the country have the potential to improve student achievement