This study investigated teachers' perception of building-level authentic leadership and its effect on teachers' perception of change. A survey comprised of a pre-STEAM questionnaire, the Authentic Leadership Questionnaire (ALQ), and Stages of Concern Questionnaire (SoCQ) sent through Qualtrics was used to collected data and was analyzed using…

Since the passing of No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 (NCLB), teacher autonomy over curricular decisions has been restricted. As a result, state and local school districts faced increased pressures to adopt highly prescriptive and standardized literacy curricular programmes. Given this context, literacy curriculum adoption has become a widely…

Education reform has focused on academic standards, but curriculum is still weighed down by outdated subject-area categories that are reinforced through various practices and institutions. T his article examines the possibilities for an integrative curriculum model that can accommodate the broad goals of holistic education and the needs of society…

Elementary schools face pressures to substantially increase student achievement in all subjects with limited time in the school day. In particular, science struggles to gain instructional momentum due to many internal and external factors. The school district of Wynne (pseudonym), located within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, has generational…

This study investigates the implementation of science instruction in a low SES/high minority district, and the experiences of individuals in an elementary principal network who inform science standards and curriculum implementation. This study specifically examines how principals make sense of science policies. Given the intra-school and…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), passed in 2015, succeeded in weakening the least popular parts of the No Child Left Behind act. But, argues Jack Jennings, it's a purely reactive piece of legislation, offering no positive vision for the federal government's role in addressing K-12 education's most urgent problems. ESSA is still young, he…

In the United States, the prevailing high school mathematics course sequence begins with a year of Algebra I, followed by a year of geometry and a year of Algebra II. Educators and others have raised concerns about the extent to which this sequence, which prioritizes the mastery of algebra, is appropriate for the longer-term education and career…

This study used historical data to find associations between changes in policies, funding, and accountability stemming from No Child Left Behind and the provision of services offered to students identified as gifted in the state of Washington. Descriptive statistics and a regression model are used to examine the change in gifted programs by school…

The qualitative study shows how 20 teachers from 4 districts in the same state enacted mandated school-wide writing curricula. Analyses of the observations and interviews revealed that 4 teachers were faithfully following the district-adopted curriculum, 4 rejected it, and 12 teachers adapted the curriculum to meet their students' needs. The…

This paper analyzes the history, current practice, and dangers associated with Social-Emotional Learning (SEL). With roots in American progressive education and particularly in the movements for Outcome-Based Education and Self-Esteem, SEL is now pushed onto state and local education systems by the federal government and even international…

Nested within a 5-year examination of Teach for America (TFA) corps members' experiences with learning to teach, this article focuses on the salient theme of "Reform Models" found in data collected when a highly publicized testing cheating scandal was breaking in this urban district. Using constructivist grounded theory, researchers…

The US Department of Education notes that, "in 1970, U.S. schools educated only one in five children with disabilities, and many states had laws excluding certain students, including children who were deaf, blind, emotionally disturbed or mentally retarded, from its schools." Now, they estimate that more than 6.5 million children and…

The challenges facing our children in the 21st century are rapidly changing. As a result, schools bear a greater responsibility to prepare students for college, career, and life and must be held accountable for more than just testing and reporting on a narrow set of outcomes aimed at minimum levels of competency. Thus, scholars, educators, and…

Case studies about issues arising from education policy were written between 2003 and 2011 by doctoral candidates in Curriculum and Instruction who were career K-12 educators. Literary analysis was employed in grouping 57 case studies, which described primarily situations that occurred in school districts in one large metropolitan area, by topic…

Mathematics curriculum has long been a topic of keen interest in mathematics education and remains a central issue in efforts to improve mathematics learning opportunities for students. This Yearbook continues in a long line of National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Yearbooks that have addressed various facets of the changing mathematics…