While working in the Social and Emotional Support Services (SESS) for Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland (MCPS), the author initiated a project to collect data on services to students with emotional needs. During the 2016-2017 school year, MCPS was the 17th largest school district in the country with nearly 160,000 students speaking 150…

K-12 education standards in the U.S. require all students to read complex texts across many subject areas. The "Language Muse™ Activity Palette" is a web-based language-instruction application that uses NLP algorithms and lexical resources to automatically generate language activities and support English language learners' content…

This discussion paper explores the possibilities and risks that data linkage presents for the vocational education and training (VET) sector. Along with a broad overview of the nature of data linkage, it highlights possible applications for data linkage in the VET sector and examines the key challenges associated with its use. A number of case…

Many states and school districts are rethinking how they do educational assessment. A few are going further: attempting to build "balanced," "comprehensive," or "next-generation" assessment systems. At the same time, practitioners and researchers have long mulled the purposes and parts such systems should have. But…

The purpose of this study was to set future directions of the Cyber Home Learning System in Korea based on its current status. The Cyber Home Learning System has been designed and used by K-12 students to study voluntarily at home using online lessons. The development process of the Cyber Home Learning System was composed of the following four…

For more than a decade, states have evaluated school performance largely through a single measure--test scores--and rated schools on whether they improved students' performance in reading or math. The idea was to focus schools' attention on the outcomes that mattered most and to focus states' attention on the schools that needed the most help in…

Data-mining systems provide a variety of opportunities for school district personnel to streamline operations and focus on student achievement. This article describes the value of data mining for school personnel, finance departments, teacher evaluations, and in the classroom. It suggests that much could be learned about district practices if one…

In this article, researchers Dick M. Carpenter II and Grant Clayton explore common enrollment systems (CESs)--how they work and what school leaders can learn from districts that have implemented CESs. Denver, New Orleans, and Newark (New Jersey) have rolled out this centralized enrollment process for all district-run and charter schools in their…

This report investigates factors that drive teachers to embrace or challenge the use of products and services designed to support improvements in practice. Key elements of the study include: (1) Technology-based resources studied include those designed for video observations, peer feedback and collaboration, online professional learning, and…

This quantitative study investigated the differences in perceptions and attitudes toward technology integration of K-12 public school teachers in rural, suburban, and urban environments. The purpose was to examine the relationship between frequency of use and perception of effectiveness of web-based learning tools based upon the type of school…

In order to meet the needs of today's knowledge economy, education needs to move beyond the industrial age approach of treating all learners as if they are the same and adopt a learner-centered model of education suitable for the information age. To support this model, a new and transformative technology is needed that focuses on mastery and…

Thanks to intelligent solutions, schools, colleges, and universities no longer need to manage user account life cycles by using scripts or tedious manual procedures. The solutions house the scripts and manual procedures. Accounts can be automatically created, modified, or deleted in all applications within the school. This article describes how an…

As data-based decision making is receiving increased attention in education, more and more school performance feedback systems (SPFSs) are being developed and used worldwide. These systems provide schools with data on their functioning. However, little research is available on the characteristics of the different SPFSs. Therefore, this study…

Rounding the corner on the design of new teacher-evaluation plans, states and districts are beginning to wrestle with the significant technical and logistical hurdles for transforming their blueprints into reality. In the coming months, more states--especially those that won grants through the $4 billion federal Race to the Top initiative--are…

The everyday operations of a school district depend on a network of people, including students, teachers, staff, and administrators. However, the ancillary services staff are really responsible for making the school day run smoothly. They are often the first employees that students see in the morning, either on the school bus or in the cafeteria,…