The study explores the implementation of teacher evaluation models and federal education policies, particularly AchieveNJ, in an urban public school district in New Jersey. It focuses on principals' experiences and perceptions, uncovering their challenges and thoughts on the policy's effectiveness in enhancing teacher performance and student…

The Department of Defense is the only government entity serving more meals daily than New York City public schools, which operates a meal program with a rich history of both progress and regress. This story of New York City school meals is one that shows both local action and inputs of the federal government. A landmark policy change in 2017…

Under both No Child Left Behind and the Every Student Succeeds Act, school leaders have been mandated to employ data-driven decision-making (DDDM) to diagnose student needs, implement targeted supports, and design school improvements. However, district administrators tasked with developing principals' DDDM capacity face a tough road. The authors…

Background/Context: The administration of student discipline is one of many responsibilities under the purview of teachers and educational leaders across the country. Maintaining a safe environment with minimal disruptions is not an easy task. From existing research on student discipline, we have learned that critical examination of data and…

In the spring of 2019, the Center on Education Policy (CEP) at the George Washington University conducted interviews with leaders from five school districts that differed in key characteristics. The aim was to learn about districts' efforts to implement the requirements of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) for using evidence-based approaches…

This research contrasts two urban school districts that serve similar populations yet vary notably with respect to the provision of speech and language services. The results suggest that variation in the provision of speech-language services is driven by district-level variations in budgetary and legal contexts as well as procedural differences.…

State takeovers were an infrequently applied strategy to address financially and academically troubled schools for many decades. The opportunity for a more extensive state role in taking over troubled schools grew further with the announcement of the federal "Race to the Top" (RTTT) program in 2009. RTTT required states to develop plans…

Improving low-achieving schools is a critical challenge facing urban education. Recent national policy shifts have pressed states to take an expanded role in school improvement efforts. In 2009, a federal grant competition called Race to the Top (RttT) compelled states to improve their capacity to implement ambitious education reform agendas.…

This study examined how the professional development initiative of Reading Apprenticeship (RA), which included the support of a school-based literacy coach, impacted two high school Title I teachers and their students. In the field of education, much is known about the qualities of professional development which lead to improved learning on the…

Rates of student homelessness have increased dramatically throughout the United States in recent years, yet there has been a dearth of scholarly analysis devoted to key organizations' engagement of the issue. Given that the federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act has taken on a central, but underexamined role in shaping this engagement,…

School districts have been attempting to implement the response-to-intervention (RTI) framework in an effort both to comply with federal legislation (i.e., IDEA 2004) and to improve teaching for all students. Extant research on this framework has focused on exploring assessment practices across tiers and the efficacy of specific interventions,…

The 2001 reauthorization of the Federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), otherwise known as No Child Left Behind, requires those schools which fail to make "adequate yearly progress" for five consecutive years to enter into "restructuring." Further clarified by the Obama administration's Blueprint for Reform,…

Project Linking Learning ("Link") was created to target the needs of gifted students in urban school districts with historically underserved populations. Project Linking Learning implemented a linking curriculum between in-class instruction and an afterschool enrichment program for selected students in second through fifth grade.…

The "Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006 (Perkins IV): was intended to raise the academic and technical rigor of secondary and postsecondary CTE instruction in order to prepare students for entry into high-skill, high-wage, or high-demand occupations. Under "Perkins IV," CTE generally means a sequence of…

The renewal of IDEA (2004) produced a number of changes in the identification process for children with Specific Learning Disabilities (SLDs). The requirement that students must present a severe discrepancy between IQ and academic performance has been modified to allow for a more flexible problem-solving approach commonly labeled "Response to…