Through policies like No Child Left Behind, the federal government incentivized the use of student performance data as a core strategy for improving student achievement. The assumption behind these efforts is that data will be used to guide teacher practice and promote high-quality instruction. This study examined how teachers describe using data…

Florida's Race to the Top (RTTT) competition invited university-district partnerships to compete for funds aimed at improving principal preparation programs. In this article, we report findings from a qualitative case study focused on one program partnership funded by RTTT. Drawing upon interviews with faculty and relevant documents, we conducted…

The top priority for the U.S. Department of Education's new Race to the Top-District (RTT-D) competition is to create personalized-learning environments to bolster student achievement: "Absolute Priority 1: Personalized Learning Environments. To meet this priority, an applicant must coherently and comprehensively address how it will build on…

Over the past two decades, community organizing has emerged as an effective force for school improvement. In the context of shrinking education funding, stubborn opportunity and achievement gaps between low-income and wealthy children and between children of color and White children, and polarizing debate on school reform, community organizing…

The primary purpose of this study was to determine if there were commonalities in the approaches of 10 elementary school principals in the state of Florida identified as "success stories" in leading reading improvement in their schools in 2002, shortly after enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act at the national level and the Just…

This document reports on the third of a series of hearings on the reauthorization of expiring federal elementary and secondary education programs. Four school administrators gave testimony regarding the block grant programs funded under the Education Consolidation and Improvement Act, Chapter 2. Testimony suggested the following: (1) the proposed…

Results of a national study of the use of funds provided by the 1974 amendments to Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act by the state education agencies (SEAs) are presented. The study was undertaken to (1) describe and analyze SEA policies and activities regarding bilingual education, (2) describe and analyze the SEA-level…

Three districts that desegregated their schools by choice--Berkeley, California, Moore County North Carolina, and Searcy, Arkansas--as well as the Hillsborough County, Florida school district, desegregated under court order, are examined in this publication. All four studies examine the desegregation plans of each district as well as the…

State policies and activities for systematizing work force development were examined through a survey completed by individuals involved in work force development in 40 states and case studies of policies and programs in Texas, Utah, Florida, and Michigan. Throughout all levels of government and the private sector, consensus that work force…