The federal School Improvement Grants (SIG) program, to which $3 billion were allocated under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), supports schools attempting to turn around a history of low performance. School turnaround also is a focus of Race to the Top (RTT), another ARRA-supported initiative, which involved a roughly $4…

The School District of Philadelphia (SDP), like many other urban school districts, struggles to increase its hiring and retention of experienced and highly qualified teachers in its low-performing/high-need schools. Toward the goal of improving teacher quality and the experience balance, particularly in hard-to-staff schools, the Philadelphia…

Analyzes site-based management structures, using specific case of teacher unions and collective bargaining. From coalitional perspective, interview data suggest that teacher union leaders may be in a quandary, shifting between traditional "bread and butter" issues and professional/collegial concerns. A struggle exists involving the…

The two studies reported in this paper inquired into the factors that influence the activities of principals in Ontario while implementing a special education policy. Data were gathered from interviews with 23 principals and a questionnaire distributed to 114 principals, respectively. Findings tend to favor autonomous, "empowered"…