In the current educational climate of testing and accountability, many elementary teachers find they lack adequate time and confidence to enact reform-based science teaching due to pressure to perform in reading and mathematics. With this tension in mind, we explore the phenomenon of elementary teacher specialisation in comparison to the…

In the United States, teachers' job-related stress and self-efficacy levels across all grades are influenced in some manner by the demands of high-stakes testing. This sequential mixed-methods study aimed at examining the dynamics among assigned subject matter, teacher job-related stress, and teacher self-efficacy in a large south-eastern Texas…

The field of education is progressively building capacity and tools for producing rigorous research evidence to use in improving educational practice and outcomes. The knowledge base is lacking, however, in explicating the dynamics of research-based decision making and exploring connections between the work of research-practice partnerships and…

With increasing demands on student achievement as set forth by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) (2001), teachers are the catalyst for improving their students' performance (Marzano, 2000). Existing studies on the use of formative assessment as a process by which teachers elicit information of their students' progress and use that information to…

Indiana English learners (ELs) constitute a rapidly growing portion of the state's school-aged population, and those classified as limited English proficient are low performers on the state test. The purpose of this embedded mixed methods study was to understand how school personnel respond to accountability mandates, interpret test scores, and…

Value-added models (VAMs) are used to measure changes in student achievement on large-scaled standardized test scores from year to year. When aggregated, VAM estimates are used to measure teacher effectiveness and hold teachers accountable for the value they purportedly add to or detract from student learning and achievement. In this study,…

Since the onset of NCLB legislation and federal funding for schools tied to summative assessment performance, educational leaders have sought to identify factors that are most influential on student learning outcomes. Research continues to link the use of formative data practices and teacher efficacy to improved student performance. The intent of…

Teacher accountability has gained attention since the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, also known as, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), enacted in 2002 by then President George W. Bush. Research shows a strong correlation between effective teacher instruction and student achievement, yet the area of feedback to teachers on…

This research study examines the impact of teacher research on participants in a large-scale educational reform initiative in the United States, No Child Left Behind, and its strand for reading teachers, Reading First. Reading First supported professional development for teachers in order to increase student scores on standardized tests. The…

The focus of this research is in the area of academic interventions and their effect on graduation rates in secondary schools in Missouri. In light of the regulations within the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and its accountability requirements for schools, this study is important and timely in order to provide valuable examples of effective…

This article examines urban school-university partnership research after No Child Left Behind. Central to the review is an analysis in the trend of research methods utilized across studies. It was found that many studies are single-case studies or anecdotal. There are few quantitative, sustained qualitative, or mixed-methods studies represented in…

Mandates such as No Child Left Behind (2001) and Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (2004) shifted the emphasis of instruction to include skills that access the general curriculum for students with moderate to severe intellectual disability. The purpose of this study was to describe changes in literacy instruction of teachers…

The superintendents have become more of educational leaders in order to meet the federal mandates of NCLB and IDEA which have the goal of students with disabilities being proficient in reading and math by 2014, while providing FAPE to meet their individual program and service requirements. The increased accountability pressure of NCLB for federal…

School districts are spending millions on tutoring outside regular school day hours for economically and academically disadvantaged students in need of extra academic assistance. Under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), parents of children in persistently low-performing schools were allowed to choose their child's tutoring provider, and together with…

Technological advances in the last decade have impacted delivery methods of university courses. More and more courses are offered in a variety of formats. While academic rigor is a term often used, its definition is less clear. This mixed-methods study explored graduate student conceptions of rigor in the online learning environment embedded…