Background/context: In an era of accountability and standardization, elementary social studies is consistently losing its curricular foothold to English/language arts, math, and science instruction. Purpose: This article examines the relationship between elementary teachers' perceptions of instructional autonomy, teaching context, state testing…

To inform the "Leandro v. State of North Carolina" Action Plan, the Learning Policy Institute examined the within-school and out-of-school barriers to obtaining a sound basic education facing students who attend North Carolina's high-poverty schools. High-poverty schools are schools where 75% or more students are at risk because their…

This report takes a first step toward filling the need for more information on time allocated to schooling. Data from the federal Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), the only nationally representative data source available for identifying variations in time across schools, are used to measure and document in-school time among the nation's…

This quantitative study used the Schools and Staffing Survey of 2007-2008, a school-based stratified probability-proportionate-to-size sample of all American schools, to explore the relationships of professional development to teachers' self- and collective efficacy by school accountability status as measured by adequate yearly progress (AYP). In…

Background/Context: Teachers affect student performance through their interaction with students in the context of the classrooms and schools where teaching and learning take place. Although it is widely assumed that supportive working conditions improve the quality of instruction and teachers' willingness to remain in a school, little is known…

Policy shapes practice, and the increasingly important realm of professional development is no exception. In order to identify effective professional development policies and strategies, a Stanford University research team examined the policy frameworks supporting high levels of professional development activity in four states. The…