Understandings of teacher expertise in the US have transformed over the past 40 years, arguably being "narrowed" and "numericized" due to high-stakes accountability and neoliberal education reform movements. While this trend has been thoroughly studied under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and Race to the Top regimes, less…

The problem addressed in this study was a lack of teacher confidence in implementing culturally responsive practice in early childhood classrooms leading to low academic achievement in minority students. Federal regulations, including the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), mandate that all students are given the support needed to succeed. PK-12…

Elementary music teachers are required to attend long-term, campus-wide professional development outside their content area. The purpose of this interpretive qualitative study was to better understand how elementary music teachers in a North Texas and a South-Central Colorado school district who have had five or more years of teaching experience…

In 1983 the National Commission for Excellence in Education investigated claimed that U.S. schools were failing to adequately educate children. The Commission identified many inconsistencies nationwide in areas of access, teacher standards, learning standards, and accountability. This investigation led to an evolution of legislation such as the No…

The Institute for Multi-Sensory Education's (IMSE) mission of "empowering districts, schools, teachers, and parents to be agents of change toward equitable literacy instruction for all learners that is driven by research" is reflected in the organization's structured literacy approach to the Orton-Gillingham (OG) curriculum and their…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) has replaced No Child Left Behind (NCLB), and many changes were made to offer more flexibility for English language learners (ELLs). Historically, teachers have not been well informed of the changes made to the specific requirements of educational policy despite being at the frontline to implement these…

Countries are seeing a rise in the number of families and schoolchildren who do not speak English as a first language. This study focuses on how two White monolingual English-speaking elementary teachers positioned language as it related to their Spanish-speaking students within a graduate teacher education program in the United States. Our work…

Within the United States of America, a few states enacted a new educational accountability system that grades school districts and campuses that is measured by student performance. The state of Texas implemented the A-F accountability grading systems to inform the community and parents about the campuses in a simplistic layout and language. These…

LXD Research conducted a third-party, mixed-methods efficacy study of 95 Percent Group's Phonics Core Program (95 PCP) to determine the program's impact on fourth and fifth grade students' literacy outcomes. Outcomes included Istation's Indicators of Progress (ISIP) Advanced Reading and the State of Texas Assessments of Readiness (STAAR). LXD…

This report uses data from the RAND Corporation's American Educator Panels to understand the state of infrastructure to support elementary social studies instruction during the 2021-2022 school year. The report is focused at the elementary (specifically, kindergarten through grade 5 [K-5]) level because the authors hypothesized that infrastructure…

In this overview piece, we document the six student perception surveys (SPSs) currently available for state, district, and school consumption and use, given SPSs are increasingly becoming one of the more popular "multiple measures" being used to evaluate teacher qualities. We present descriptive information about each of these SPSs,…

Rural school leaders are faced with challenges to close the achievement gap between subgroups, mainly general and special education. Schools and school systems face several barriers to move forward with positive trends in the data provided by the Alabama State Department of Education. The purpose of this study was to examine teachers' perceptions…

Drawing upon the results of two nationally representative surveys, this report sums up 10 broad K-12 trends in 10 accompanying charts. The surveys were conducted as educators continued to grapple with the turmoil caused by the coronavirus pandemic and the debates that sometimes draw education policies into the culture wars surrounding social and…

The purpose of this pilot study was to determine the effect of teacher professional development for working with students with Autism Spectrum Disorders and teacher (N = 56) self-efficacy in the general education classroom. A pretest/posttest quasi-experimental research design was implemented. Teachers in one randomly assigned school received…

The incorporation of professional development (PD) activities for PK-12 teachers has long served to advance competency in the profession. With changes in requirements for continued teacher certification, student performance, and state-level testing, superintendents are faced with maximizing PD opportunities of their faculty. This primary…