This study examined the effects of a school improvement project involving Distributed leadership (DL), a perspective for studying or developing organization leadership through the interaction of organizational members and activities. This research was part of a larger DL Project taking place in York City School District, PA, which sought to…

Providing students and teachers with appropriate support is a pivotal component when it comes to improving student outcomes. Pre-Referral Intervention Teams (PIT) provide structured interventions and assistance for at-risk students. The purpose of this study was to answer the following research questions: (1) What are teachers' perceptions of…

In the wake of multistate outbreaks and subsequent economic cost and health causalities, food industry stakeholders formulated policies for their produce suppliers. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's guidance on Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) have been the basis for most of the industry initiated GAP certifications or audit processes. In…

This mixed method study was a practitioner inquiry into the teacher evaluation system that was enacted as a result of Pennsylvania House Bill 1901 (Act 82 of 2012). The study was an effort to gain an in-depth understanding of (a) factors that led to the passage of the Act 82 teacher evaluation policy, (b) what the policy was intended to do, and…

This study of a suburban school district in south central Pennsylvania employed a mixed method design to explore teachers' perceptions of their professional learning community (PLC) and the impact of such on teaching effectiveness and student learning. Perceptual data was collected through the Learning Community Culture Indicator (LCCI) teacher…

This mixed methods research study explored advisory programs in three middle schools located in Southeastern Pennsylvania. An advisory program is a fundamental component of an exemplary middle school yet there are often difficulties in implementing it successfully. Research indicates that a middle school advisory program cannot be successful if…

In October 2010, WestEd's Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI) won an i3 "Validation" grant to scale up and validate the Reading Apprenticeship (RA) model in three core secondary content area classes: U.S. history, biology, and English language arts. SLI's proposal stated two goals. Goal 1: To transform academic literacy teaching and…

A historical case study from a 6-8 middle school in the coal region of Northeastern Pennsylvania was conducted to examine the extent of teacher collaboration before and after the implementation of the teaming concept as well as the construction of a new middle school. The study was triangulated through the use of multiple data points including…

Children grow and change more rapidly during the first eight years of life than any other time in their life span. Progression through the physical, cognitive, and social-emotional developmental stages varies for each individual child. Children with atypical development experience a wide spectrum of variability in their development. Over the past…