In this article, we conduct a systematic review of the literature completed over the past 4 decades pertaining to teacher recruitment, retention, and resultant teacher shortages. We focus on research that examines rural settings, per the National Rural Education Association's identification of the recruitment and retention of teachers in rural…

This article examines the first regional governance reform in public education, created in the Omaha, Nebraska metropolitan area in 2007. The legislation creating this regional reform, which is called the Learning Community, established a regional governing body, the Learning Community Coordinating Council, consisting of an elected 21-member…

Finland has, as of late, become an inspiration for American school reform. There is no denying that we have much to learn from the Finnish system and it rightly deserves its global accolades. However, over the course of the following pages, I would like to suggest that it is also lucrative to look north of the 49th parallel and consider the…

In 2009, the federal government committed over $3 billion nationwide to help states and districts turn around their worst-performing schools. The U.S. Department of Education intended for the School Improvement Grants (SIGs) to spur dramatic change.This report looks at the results of a field study of the first-year implementation of those grants…

National Science Foundation's (NSF's) MSP Program seeks foremost "to improve student outcomes in high-quality mathematics and science by all students, at all pre-K-12 levels". The MSP Program, consisting of a portfolio of funded projects, in part positions itself as a research and development (R&D) program. This study has addressed the need to…

This study describes the Math and Science Partnership Program Evaluation (MSP-PE) during the project's first two years and provides the evaluation framework being used to assess the National Science Foundation's MSP Program. The study conveys the MSP-PE's ongoing design and implementation. To show how they reflect the nature of the MSP Program,…

Examines the relationship between meaningful program implementation and capacity to assess the impact of James P. Comer's School Development Program in a large-scale study, describing how the impact study became an implementation study because of such factors as changes in study design, disappearing treatment, difficulties implementing randomized…

In recent years, a series of articles have examined the performance of charter schools with mixed results. Some of this research has shown that charter school performance varies by charter type or the age of the school (Bifulco & Ladd, 2006; Buddin & Zimmer, 2005; Hanushek, Kain, & Rivkin, 2002; Sass, 2006). However, this research has…

Describes an experimental program in educational administration offered at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, focusing on program implementation and evaluation. Provides a set of changes in a small leadership-training program. The program and its changes serve as models for adjustment in small leadership-preparation programs, particularly…

Asserts that experimental designs are the gold standard for research, addressing common criticisms of the application of experimental designs to education research, discussing why they have not been applied in education as frequently as they have been in other fields, examining circumstances under which experiments are appropriate, and offering…

In January 2004 President Bush authorized the DC School Choice Incentive Act, an initiative funded at $14 million that created a scholarship program providing 1,700 low-income Washington, DC, children the opportunity to attend participating K-12 nonpublic schools in the district. In addition to offering opportunities to participating children, the…

Asserts that integrating randomized field trials (RFTs) and nationally representative surveys can strengthen the evidence base for school reform, suggesting national surveys can help determine the focus of RFTs by identifying factors that place schools at risk of poor achievement or buffer schools from risk. Surveys can provide data on the…

Discusses the quality of school-level data collected as part of state accountability systems, including the reliability and validity of school-level test scores as a measure of the value added by schools to student learning, outlining ways that these data can be usefully analyzed; illustrating challenges inherent in doing so; and discussing…

Identifies key elements necessary for effective administrator preparation; highlights clinical aspects of preparation, exploring the importance, purposes, and design of effective internship experiences; reports findings from a study of the long-term impact of one preparation program that was designed around the key elements; and discusses…

Examines the politics that arise in the research and evaluation of school reform efforts, drawing on qualitative data from a study of comprehensive school reform to elucidate methodological issues in several areas; discussing how the researchers were perceived, how participants used researchers' research and presence in political ways, and how…