Purpose: This study examines differences in the mechanisms that charter schools and traditional public schools use to facilitate parental school involvement and the degree to which these differences account for the high levels of involvement among charter school parents. Data and Research Methods: We merge data from principals and teachers from…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate music teacher professional development (PD) practice and policy in the United States between 1993 and 2012. Using data from the nationally representative Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) spanning these 20 years, I examined music teacher PD participation by topic, intensity, relevance, and format; music…

This study compares what schools are doing to engage parents and analyzes the efficacy of these initiatives across predominantly Black, Latino, and White schools. Using the National Center for Education Statistics's (NCES) Schools and Staffing Surveys (SASS, 1999-2004), we specify a model that accounts both for factors associated with school…

Public and private school principals were asked to report whether their school had a staff member assigned to work on parent involvement; workshops or courses for parents or guardians; services to support parent participation such as providing child care or transportation; or a parent drop-in center or lounge. The Principal Questionnaire was…

The authors examined parental involvement's (PI) impact on school performance. The hierarchical linear modeling method was applied to national Schools and Staffing Survey 2007-2008 data. They found that PI variables explained significant variance for the outcomes of (a) meeting adequate yearly progress (AYP) and (b) being free from sanctions. The…

Background: Professional development offerings assist K-12 educators in addressing new and evolving classroom dynamics, circumstances, and situations. With the emerging demands of an increasingly science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)-infused society, teachers are challenged to provide high-quality service and equitable…

This effort: 1) establishes an autonomy definition uniquely tailored for teaching, 2) validates a nationally generalizable teacher autonomy construct, 3) demonstrates that the model describes and explains the autonomy levels of particular teacher groups, and 4) verifies the construct can represent teacher autonomy in other empirical models. The…

Using national data from the 2007-08 School and Staffing Survey, we compared the relationships between parental involvement and school outcomes related to adequate yearly progress (AYP) in urban, suburban, and rural schools. Parent-initiated parental involvement demonstrated significantly positive relationships with both making AYP and staying off…

School leadership has been shown to exert a positive but mostly indirect influence on school and student outcomes. Currently, there is great interest in how quality leadership preparation is related to leadership practice and improved teacher outcomes. The purpose of the study was to understand the moderating influence of leadership preparation on…

This report is the second part of a three-phase research study of teacher professional learning opportunities in the United States. In the first report, "Professional Learning in the Learning Profession: A Status Report on Teacher Development in the United States and Abroad" (Wei, Darling-Hammond, Richardson, Andree, & Orphanos,…

Background/Context: Recent research has demonstrated the potential for teacher professional development to enhance teacher learning, improve instruction, and increase student achievement. Nevertheless, research examining the relationship between state and local policies and teachers' participation in professional development is sparse. This…

Policy shapes practice, and the increasingly important realm of professional development is no exception. In order to identify effective professional development policies and strategies, a Stanford University research team examined the policy frameworks supporting high levels of professional development activity in four states. The…

This report is the third of a three-phase research study of teacher professional learning opportunities in the United States. In this third phase of the research, the authors conducted case studies of four professionally active states to get a deeper look at the policy frameworks that support professional development in those states. These…

This study examined differences in nine factors between a group of the highest-performing needs high schools (HPHN) and a group of the lowest performing high-needs (LPHN) high schools using teacher responses from a national dataset. The factors are: (1) shared mission and goals; (2) professional development; (3) collaboration among teachers (4)…

Schools and Staffing Survey data on public school teachers from 1993-94 and 1999-2000 show that more teachers participate in content-focused professional development, more policy supports provide incentives for participation, and more resources for professional development are allocated to high-poverty schools. The largest increase in sustained…