Trust is a critical component of successful schools, especially trust between the principals and the teachers. Trust does not happen automatically. It has to be a part of overall planning for the professional development of both principals and teachers. The aim of this study is to identify the level of teachers' perception of school principals'…

The study investigated the leadership styles of principals who were successful in achieving good results consistently in the Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE) in Edo State, Nigeria. No previous studies have examined leadership styles and the link to student performance as measured by public examinations in Edo State. The…

District- and state-level efforts to remake teacher evaluation systems are among the most substantial and widely adopted reforms that U.S. public schools have experienced in decades. Research on these next generation of evaluation systems has focused overwhelmingly on policy goals, program designs, and performance measures. However, still very…

As online education grows, institutions must develop and evaluate student services to meet the needs of adult online students. The university at which the study was conducted had growing online enrollment, but no systematic examination of services from the students' perspective to drive service development and improvement. This represented a gap…

A recent policy statement issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and U.S. Department of Education (DOE) on early childhood inclusion presents extensive recommendations for state and local actions that could improve young children's access to high quality inclusive early childhood programs (HHS/DOE, 2015). This brief…

Three years after the launch of Chicago's redesigned teacher evaluation system, Recognizing Educators Advancing Chicago Students (REACH) Students, most teachers and administrators continue to report they believe REACH has the potential to improve instruction and student learning, and they remain negative about the use of student growth in…

Our urban school systems struggle because so many of their students live in poverty, but they also struggle because they were designed a hundred years ago, for an industrial society. In an increasing number of cities, they are being replaced by 21st century systems, in which the central administration does not operate all schools and employ all…

The promise of personalized learning excites many educators, and schools are wondering how best to introduce it and how they know when they have achieved it. Rather than thinking of personalized learning as an "it" (i.e., a program that is either present or not), we might think of it as an approach to teaching and learning that has many…

Reading is more than just decoding the letters on a page--although that is critically important. It is drawing meaning from text and making connections to the outside world. These are the critical thinking skills that determine success both in and outside the classroom. In past years, far too many of Tennessee's students have passed through…

This year's report focuses on efforts to redesign high schools. Those include incorporating student voice, implementing a rigorous and relevant curriculum, embracing career exploration, and more. The report also includes the latest statistics on the nation's overall, on-time high school graduation rate. Articles include: (1) To Build a Better High…

People providing services to schools, teachers, and students want to know whether these services are effective. With that knowledge, a project director can expand services that work well and adjust implementation of activities that are not working as expected. When finding that an innovative strategy benefits students, a project director might…

Despite concerted efforts to improve children's learning by improving classrooms, results have been lackluster. There is a growing understanding that a sole focus on teachers and classrooms is insufficient. Yet, the field has not systematically explored how to help early childhood education settings become organizations designed for powerful…

This project examined recent changes to Michigan's Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS). A QRIS is a way to assess, communicate, and improve the quality of early childhood education (ECE) programs. The goals of the study were to document how Michigan's original QRIS functioned and to understand how changes to the QRIS calculation system…

This research is a sequential explanatory mixed methods study seeking to understand the influences of mathematics self-efficacy (math SE) on the behavior and attitudes of engineering students with poor math preparation behavior and attitudes in their first college math courses. The quantitative phase of this research assessed the math SE of…

This chapter identifies and summarizes the findings from international empirical research on the impact of school inspections. A systematic literature review was undertaken to describe the empirical evidence on (positive) effects from school inspections in four categories: school staff intentions to improve and reflections on school quality,…