By 2012, all of the states in this study had started implementing new or revised teacher and leader evaluation systems. There are many and varying updates to these systems, and some of them have been made to meet conditions for a state's federal "Race to the Top" (RTT) grant. Other updates have been made to meet conditions for a state's…

All of the 15 states in this study have recently been involved in school accountability system reform. Since 2011, the states have taken advantage of a federal program to give them flexibility around certain accountability requirements of the "No Child Left Behind Act" of 2001 (NCLB), the most recent reauthorization of the Elementary and…

The role of the principal is rapidly changing. Once seen as building managers tasked with bus schedules and student discipline, principals now lead a range of school-level reform efforts. But not all principals are equipped to lead dramatic student achievement gains or know which actions to prioritize. Research on school leaders in urban areas…

Community colleges are an increasingly important component of the higher education systems in the United States. Community college as a pathway toward a better educated workforce has been emphasized at a national and state level. Virginia's policy makers set an ambitious goal of producing 100,000 new baccalaureate degrees in the Commonwealth by…

Nigeria is a signatory to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) declaration but till now she has not made any significant milestones in actualizing these human development goals. In spite of the coordinated efforts towards mobilizing those in the formal education system to partially address its implementation challenges, serious gaps still exit…

Experiential cooking classes for low-income adults can help improve healthy nutrition behaviors. However, nutrition educators and Extension professionals can face challenges in successful implementation of these programs such as difficulties recruiting and retaining participants. Drawing upon lessons learned from a cooking intervention with…

Comparing the nation's populations health problems with high school graduation rates may seem like a stretch, but just as obesity poses a real threat to the nation's future, so does the inability to graduate students who are career and college ready. Reversing the trend of obesity will take time and so will the goal of graduating all students from…

While many studies have assessed the practices, status, activities, costs, and growth of faculty development programs at community colleges, few studies have examined the impact of these programs from the perspective of the faculty members who participate in them. Accordingly, this qualitative study employed interviews with faculty members at…

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to examine select novice teachers' perceived knowledge of high-quality reading instruction, explore the extent that select novice teachers implemented high-quality reading instruction into their own classrooms, and to investigate any factors that explain the similarities and differences between…

"Tackling Behaviour in the Primary School" provides ready-made advice and support for classroom professionals and can be used, read and adapted to suit the busy everyday lives of teachers working in primary schools today. This valuable text sets the scene for managing behaviour in the primary classroom in the context of the Children Act 2004…

This report highlights 10 of the most advanced and talked-about teacher evaluation systems nationally: Delaware; Rhode Island; Tennessee; Hillsborough County, Florida; Houston, Texas; New Haven, Connecticut; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Washington, DC (referred to throughout just as Washington); Achievement First (a charter management organization,…

The purpose of this study was to construct an instructional systems design model for chemistry teaching laboratories at the undergraduate level to accurately depict the current practices of design experts. This required identifying the variables considered during design, prioritizing and ordering these variables, and constructing a model. Experts…

The reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 set in motion the movement away from the typical Referral/IQ Discrepancy Model of Exceptional Student Education identification toward the Response to Intervention (RtI) model for the identification of students with reading-related learning disabilities. This…

The case study documented one large, multicampus community college's progress in implementing sustainability goals outlined in the American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment (ACUPCC). The case study examined the role of branch-campus presidents and the college president in institutionalizing sustainability. Responses…

In 1892 Lewis Terman began a movement to support gifted students in the classroom. Leta Hollingworth continued this research and explored the type of instruction needed. Both concluded gifted students need challenging activities to develop their potential. Unfortunately, today our country does not ensure all gifted students are put in a position…