This statewide Report Card to the Public is published in accordance with Alaska Statute 14.03.120 for the school year 2014-2015. Under state law, each school district also is required to report information about its performance. Public knowledge pertaining to the school system is an important part of Alaska's accountability system. This report is…

School districts, and even states, striving to identify optimal school size are confounded more often than not by the conflicting research findings and theoretical arguments presented throughout the literature. Some writers adamantly declare that smaller schools are a "must" if educational opportunity is to be optimized. Others argue that school…

The purpose of this study was to conduct descriptive, exploratory research to answer the questions: What is the ideal class size for online courses? What are the variables that affect optimal class size in this environment? As a study of the literature, the goal was to collect research-based evidence supporting optimal class size. The initial…

The Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act of 2006 (Perkins IV) is the principal source of federal funding to states for the improvement of secondary and postsecondary career and technical education programs. States are provided with funds for distribution to local educational agencies (LEAs) and postsecondary institutions for…

Drawing from a three-year qualitative multi-case study that examined three urban elementary schools as these schools instituted grade-level data-based collaboration as a school-wide literacy reform strategy, this article investigates how knowledge of student learning and instructional considerations evolved over time across this collection of…

Background: Whereas much attention has been focused on adolescent risk behaviors such as substance use, much less has been devoted to self-injury in the general adolescent population. Purpose: This study had two purposes: (1) describe the prevalence of self-injury among early adolescents in the general middle school population, and (2) identify…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the interaction effect between grade level and gender with respect to students' attitudes toward chemistry lessons taught in secondary schools. The sample consisted of 954 chemistry students in grades Secondary 4-7 (approximately 16-19 years of age) in Hong Kong. Students' attitudes were…

The purpose of this mixed study dissertation was to determine if teachers in North Dakota public schools show signs of teacher burnout and the extent to which NCLB is a major stress factor. The research questions were: To what extent are teachers experiencing symptoms of burnout? What are the factors of burnout? The research hypothesis was: The…

This study followed a cohort of students from Grade 1 to Grade 11 in one struggling school district that had Reading Recovery (RR) in the Grade 1. The RR program is an intervention given only to students in the Grade 1 who are reading below grade level on the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Assessment. The researched district had a high poverty, high…

Purpose. This dissertation addresses the problem of principal turnover. Using state and city level administrative data, a study of principals and their schools in greater Kansas City, Missouri, St. Louis, Missouri, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was conducted with the goal of discovering themes that emerge regarding the factors associated with turnover…

Data from Hong Kong PISA 2003 show that 15-year-old Hong Kong students who have immigrant parents from mainland China are grossly overrepresented in grades below the modal grade attended by most native Hong Kong students. Same-age comparison, when grade level is not taken into account, puts immigrants' children at a disadvantaged position in the…

While structural reform has certainly inspired change in Boston's public schools, its true value is best measured by examining the impact those changes have had on students. Seen through the lens of student performance over the past five years there is ample suggestion that these structural changes have been more than just window dressing--they…

Learning cycles were developed in Brazil as an innovative project in order to address the needs and characteristics of the country's growing heterogeneous urban population. This new school model aims at reducing dropout rates and student failure as well as providing a non-interrupted school experience for diverse learners. In this article, the…

Some evidence suggests that close friends may be knowledgeable of youth's psychological adjustment. However, friends are understudied as reporters of adjustment. The current study examines associations between self- and friend-reports of internalizing and externalizing adjustment in a community sample of fifth-, eighth-, and eleventh-grade youth.…

The School Improvement Grant (SIG) program, initially enacted as part of the "No Child Left Behind" amendments to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, underwent a substantial transformation under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Under the new program, states identified 2,172 persistently low-achieving schools…