Purpose: School district superintendents say politics is the number one factor limiting their performance, yet research provides limited guidance on navigating the political dynamics of district improvement. State takeovers and district-wide turnaround efforts tend to involve particularly heated and polarized debates. Massachusetts' 2012 takeover…

This brief is an addendum to an earlier report, "Getting on Track to Graduation" (see ED613890) published in May 2018 by the Philadelphia Education Research Consortium (Crofton and Neild, 2018). Focusing on two cohorts of first-time ninth grade students (the Classes of 2019 and 2020), Getting on Track to Graduation examined the extent to…

Middle school is often the last place where students are taught basic reading skills such as phonology, morphology, fluency, and comprehension before they move on to high school where reading is predominately focused on understanding, analysis, application and evaluation of content area material. In addition, middle school students are exposed to…

Efforts to increase time and opportunity to learn science in urban, underserved elementary schools have focused on improving teachers' science instruction through school-based professional development. This dissertation examined how the social justice science teacher identities of two co-teachers of color developed and shaped while participating…

California educates more than 6 million children in its K-12 public schools. More than half of these students are economically disadvantaged. Almost a quarter are English Learners (ELs), compared with fewer than one in ten nationwide. In order to better serve its student population, the state has enacted several reforms in recent years--and state…

Nearly three-quarters of public schools in the United States enroll English language learners (ELLs). That means teachers at all grade levels need to know how to help these students achieve full academic English language proficiency. In "Dispelling Misconceptions About English Language Learners," Barbara Gottschalk dispels 10 common…

For over 150 years, the Southern Education Foundation (SEF) has been committed to developing and advocating for high-quality school systems for students of color and low-income students throughout the South. Policymakers, including those both elected or appointed to critical state and local positions, maintain tremendous influence over the quality…

Middle school special education teachers often express concern about challenging student behavior. Class-Wide Function-Related Intervention Teams (CW-FIT), a behavior management program based on school-wide positive behavior support, has been effective in elementary general education classrooms. The present study, the first to apply it in a middle…

This applied dissertation was designed to understand and explore common faculty perceptions of why some faculty engage their online healthcare graduate students who are deficient in writing skills to improve and what interventions they used. This study utilized a case study qualitative approach to collect and analyze the data. This study explored…

Hackathons, the time-bound collaborative project-based competitions increasingly popular with undergraduate CS students, are both transformative and problematic. On one hand, they are unique opportunities to apply skills learned in the classroom to real-world, interest driven projects that celebrate risk taking, collaboration, and playfulness. On…

In recent decades, changes to federal and state accountability policy and related teacher evaluation systems occurred in the United States with minimal input from two of the largest groups of stakeholders impacted: principals and teachers. For this case study, I explored principals' and teachers' perceptions of their experiences with the Texas…

In this article, the author describes three strategies they have used to bolster interest and make use of popular culture to enhance readers' interactions with texts: pop culture pairings, musical connections, and multimodal projects. The author addresses the cultivation of pop culture awareness, the importance of multimodal pedagogy, the…

The concept of data-informed decision making (DIDM), a term used interchangeably with data-driven decision making (DDDM) and data-based decision making (DBDM), is relatively new to Irish education and the school planning process. This research sought to clarify what data principals use and how they use that information for school improvement…

This article chronicles the history of community schools and identifies common features, or "pillars," that are associated with high-quality community schools. It is drawn from "Community Schools as an Effective School Improvement Strategy: A Review of the Evidence," a report that examined 143 research studies on community…

The word innovation can mean a number of things to different stakeholders and policymakers. This discourse analysis examines how the Texas Education Agency (TEA) has used an initiative called "Districts of Innovation" to attempt to support and empower districts throughout the state of Texas. The question becomes whether those attempts…