School leaders are critical in the lives of students and to the development of their teachers. Unfortunately, in too many instances, principals are effective in spite of--rather than because of--district conditions. To truly improve student achievement for all students across the country, well-prepared principals need the tools, support, and…

Nationally, more than one million youth drop out of high school each year. One in four young people do not graduate with their age mates. Thus, in recent years, national leaders have directed sustained attention to what they term the "dropout crisis," particularly in high schools that are graduating less than two-thirds of their…

The Southern Regional Education Board's (SREB's) case study series highlights best practices High Schools That Work (HSTW) network schools and districts are implementing to better prepare students for further studies and careers. Lee's Summit West (LSW) High School near Kansas City, Missouri, boasts of a 99 percent graduation rate; 93 percent of…

The concept of "implementation fidelity" is broadly used to capture the extent to which an intervention is executed as intended by the designers of the intervention (Century, Rudnick, & Freeman, 2010; Huntley, 2005, McNaught, Tarr, & Sears, 2010, Munter, 2010). Though implementation fidelity instruments are often used to assess…

The "2014 NMC Technology Outlook for Brazilian Universities: A Horizon Project Regional Report" reflects a collaborative research effort between the New Media Consortium (NMC) and Saraiva to help inform education leaders in Brazil about significant developments in technologies supporting teaching, learning, and creative inquiry in higher…

Interactivity and inquiry-based learning science are effective ways of helping students overcome their perception of chemistry as an alien and abstract topic and instead approach the subject as a creative way of understanding ideas and applying mastered concepts to new contexts. Data acquisition systems are an extremely useful form of educational…

Background: Coaches developing young talent in team sports must maximise practice and learning of essential game skills and accurately and continuously assess the performance and potential of each player. Relative age effects highlight an erroneous process of initial and on-going player assessment, based largely on subjective opinions of game…

This paper addresses the curriculum overlap and gap between LIS education and intelligence education by analyzing the content of the websites of the intelligence education programs and courses in 27 representative intelligence education universities in the United States, and the intelligence-related programs and courses in the 56 LIS programs in…

This book is a welcome guide for educators, civic leaders, and researchers looking for ways to leverage data to identify the most effective policies, interventions, and use of resources for their communities. In the current era of reform, much has been made of the fact that there are many influences that shape children beyond the walls of the…

Durkheim's nineteenth-century analysis of national suicide rates dismissed prior concerns about mortality data fidelity. Over the intervening century, however, evidence documenting various types of error in suicide data has only mounted, and surprising levels of such error continue to be routinely uncovered. Yet the annual suicide rate remains the…

How can statistics clearly be mathematical and yet distinct from mathematics? The answer lies in the reality that statistics is both an art and a science, and both aspects are important for teaching and learning statistics. Statistics is a mathematical science in that it applies mathematical theories and techniques. Mathematics provides the…

Common source bias has been the focus of much attention. To minimize the problem, researchers have sometimes been advised to take measurements of predictors from one observer and measurements of outcomes from another observer or to use separate occasions of measurement. We propose that these efforts to eliminate biases due to common source…

Collecting data from students within classrooms or schools, and collecting data from students on multiple occasions over time, are two common sampling methods used in educational research that often require multilevel modeling (MLM) data analysis techniques to avoid Type-1 errors. The purpose of this article is to clarify the seven major steps…

Ever since the 2001 passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), states have faced a federal mandate to improve their ability to collect and analyze education data for the purpose of tracking and reporting the progress of their education reform efforts. With the assistance of federal funds, virtually all of the states are developing…

Purpose/Objectives: The purpose of this study was to determine if the use of the Offer versus Serve (OVS) provision in the National School Lunch Program would result in a significant difference in fruit and vegetable consumption by fourth and fifth grade elementary students, and in plate waste cost. Methods: Weighed and visual plate waste data…