Recent United States (U.S.) educational policies—especially the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015—have challenged state education agencies (SEAs) to take greater responsibility for and leadership over improving underperforming schools. SEA capacity to accomplish this charge varies, so many SEAs contract with third-party, external providers in the school improvement industry. Yet, little systematic consideration has been given to the processes that SEAs use to work with appropriate, high-quality external providers. In this study, a substantial dataset consisting of publicly-available documents and survey responses permitted the analysis of how 51 SEAs solicited, vetted, monitored, and evaluated external providers that offered school improvement services. Results, which highlight how various U.S. states are responding to a seemingly ever-changing U.S. educational policy context, suggested more SEAs solicited and vetted, but approaches and procedures often differed. Far fewer SEAs, however, monitored and evaluated external providers. The paper closes with a discussion of each stage of the SEA external provider procurement process along with recommendations for future research on the school improvement industry.

中文翻译：

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征求、审查、监督和评估：一项关于州教育机构使用外部提供者进行学校改进工作的研究

最近的美国 (US) 教育政策——尤其是 2015 年《每个学生成功法案》的通过——已经要求州教育机构 (SEA) 在改善表现不佳的学校方面承担更大的责任和领导力。SEA 完成这项收费的能力各不相同，因此许多 SEA 与学校改进行业的第三方外部供应商签订合同。然而，很少有系统地考虑 SEA 用来与适当的、高质量的外部供应商合作的流程。在这项研究中，一个由公开文件和调查回复组成的大量数据集允许分析 51 个 SEA 如何征求、审查、监控和评估提供学校改进服务的外部供应商。结果，突出显示了各种美国 州正在响应看似不断变化的美国教育政策背景，建议征集和审查更多 SEA，但方法和程序往往不同。然而，很少有 SEA 监督和评估外部供应商。本文最后讨论了 SEA 外部供应商采购流程的每个阶段，以及对学校改进行业未来研究的建议。