The push for accountability in public schooling has extended to the measurement of teacher performance, accelerated by federal efforts through Race to the Top. Currently, a large number of states and districts across the country are computing measures of teacher performance based on the standardized test scores of their students and using them in…

The United States faces an increasing gap between the skills possessed by its workforce and those that are necessary to succeed in the 21st century economy. This gap poses a threat to the financial wellbeing of low-skilled American workers and their families and to the nation's long-term economic growth. Recognizing the threat posed by these…

Student retention rates and graduation rates currently play a major role in measuring the success of institutions of higher education. To contribute to the likelihood of this success many institutions offer programs designed to increase the academic performance of their students especially those classified as incoming freshmen. Others are more…

The problem of this study was that while one-to-one initiatives in the K-12 environment are growing, the technical support personnel that work in these environments are experiencing problems supporting these initiatives. The purposes of this study were to: (a) identify common problems of providing technical support in a one-to-one laptop program,…

Signed into Law on January 8, 2002, the 1,180 page No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) shifted the course of public education in America. For the first time accountability was firmly placed at the center of school operations by requiring a systematic approach to achieving reform and improving all areas of school life (Wanker & Christie, 2005). As…

This paper revisits existing experimental work on Teach For America (TFA) and extends it by examining treatment effects across the distribution of student achievement. TFA is a rapidly expanding teacher preparation program that currently serves over half a million students in low-income districts across the country. Previous research results did…

The purpose of this qualitative, phenomenological study was to investigate, through interviews, secondary teachers' perceptions of the level of the value, applicability, and implementation of skills learned within professional development offerings in the targeted school district. Non-probability, stratified, purposeful sampling was utilized to…

Unemployment is a major social problem in a small East Coast county, with lack of work experience and few marketable skills serving as the contributing factors. The Workforce Investment Act (WIA) training program is a federal program implemented by the states to improve the occupational skills and the employability of the workforce. Scholars have…

"Strategic Inquiry" is an innovative model for promoting teacher collaboration around identifying specific "learning gaps" that keep struggling students from succeeding. Gaps may include anything from the proper use of commas and conjunctions to concepts such as "slope" in math. The authors argue that addressing these…

Remedial and developmental courses and services at the University of North Carolina (UNC) are designed to address differences in pre-college preparation among our diverse student body. Often the instruction aims to address gaps in knowledge ("remediation") and provide students with the skills needed for continued learning and college…

The National Literacy Trust's Premier League Reading Stars has now been running for 10 years. During this time, hundreds of thousands of children and families have been inspired by the power of football to develop a love of reading. Although the programme has grown and evolved over this period, the premise remains the same: harnessing the…

As teacher recruitment intensifies to locate qualified teachers for our nation's classrooms, alternative teacher certification programs are becoming prevalent. Initially these programs were designed to attract professionals and college graduates to enter urban classrooms. However, what has occurred is that over 140 alternative certification…

We explore the use of instrumental variables (IV) analysis with a multi-site randomized trial to estimate the effect of a mediating variable on an outcome in cases where it can be assumed that the observed mediator is the only mechanism linking treatment assignment to outcomes, as assumption known in the instrumental variables literature as the…

Service coordinators in a statewide early intervention program were surveyed to develop an understanding of screening and referral practices to identify children on the autism spectrum. Quantitative and qualitative data summarizing autism-specific screening and referral practices are reported. More than 50% of the respondents reported that they…

In this paper, we provide an overview of psychometric procedures and guidelines Educational Testing Service (ETS) uses to evaluate automated essay scoring for operational use. We briefly describe the e-rater system, the procedures and criteria used to evaluate e-rater, implications for a range of potential uses of e-rater, and directions for…