The purpose of the PreK Annual Report is to comply with statute and inform stakeholders regarding the Children, Youth and Families Department's (CYFD) and the Public Education Department's (PED) efforts and how these are connected to the State's current PreK initiatives. This funding was continued for the 2015-16 school year. In addition, CYFD…

The purpose of our study was to examine elementary literacy teachers' perceptions of their preparedness to implement the ELA CCSS [English Language Arts Common Core State Standards]. We defined preparedness across three dimensions: teachers' perceived levels of knowledge of the standards and its components; efficacy to implement changes; and…

Professional development in education has gotten a bad reputation, and for good reason. Everyone on all sides of the education reform and improvement debate agrees that what most teachers receive as professional opportunities to learn are thin, sporadic, and of little use when it comes to improving teaching. This paper is the first of a periodic…

The Instructional Leadership Corps (ILC) is a California collaborative teacher professional learning project in which expert teachers organize local professional development to spark iterative changes in practice. Launched in 2014, ILC is a joint effort of the California Teachers Association (CTA), the National Board Resource Center (NBRC), and…

The Instructional Leadership Corps (ILC) is an innovative professional learning project in which teacher leaders in California collaborate to lead sustainable professional development to support implementation of new student standards within their districts. Over more than 4 years, the ILC has served over 100,000 teachers. The responses of these…

The impetus for this report is new evidence that state department of education work to align instruction with standards may make a difference for teachers' practices and understanding about their state standards. Using data from the RAND American Teacher Panel, the authors found that Louisiana teachers were more likely than other teachers to…

With the pressure to improve student achievement, and the propensity to use PD to influence instruction, it is easy to overlook the complex process of teacher learning. The Vygotsky Space represents iterative learning within public and private dimensions, where teacher knowledge building is positioned as interactive cultural events situated within…

Using state-representative teacher surveys in three states--Texas, Ohio, and Kentucky--we examine teachers' implementation of college- and career-readiness (CCR) standards. What do teachers report about the specificity, authority, consistency, power, and stability of their standards environment? How does their policy environment predict…

Using state-representative teacher surveys in three states--Texas, Ohio, and Kentucky--we examine teachers' implementation of college- and career-readiness (CCR) standards. What do teachers report about the specificity, authority, consistency, power, and stability of their standards environment? How does their policy environment predict…

The driving forces behind mathematics learning trajectories is the need to understand how children actually learn and make sense of mathematics--how they progress from prior knowledge, through intermediate understandings, to the mathematics target understandings--and how to use these insights to improve instruction and student learning. In this…

The purpose of this qualitative case study is to examine the perceptions of teachers and curriculum specialists over the effectiveness of professional development and available resources of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) implementation process in Arkansas. Arkansas divided the implementation process into three stages: Phase I implemented…

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore the implementation of a Professional Learning Community (PLC) as a professional development model effective in altering teachers' perceptions of their knowledge and skill in teaching developmental writing in grades K-3. This research is necessary to examine how offering teachers…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the Local Control Funding Formula are introducing major changes to California's K-12 system. Implementation of new curricula and instruction is under way at the district level, but California started its transition relatively late and it has taken a more decentralized approach than most other states.…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate teachers' perceptions about the impact of the McREL Teacher Evaluation System on their professional growth. The sample comprised 15 teachers of students in Kindergarten to Grade 4 in a suburban New Jersey school district who participated in Year 1 implementation of a new standards-based…

A random sample of 482 teachers in grades 3 through 8 from across the United States were surveyed about (a) their perceptions of the version of the Common Core writing and language standards adopted by their state and their state's writing assessment, (b) their preparation to teach writing, and (c) their self-efficacy beliefs for teaching writing.…