The goal of this toolkit is to shed light on the importance of authorizing nontraditional charter schools and how the challenges of authorizing nontraditional schools manifest in practice, as well as to provide action steps for authorizers and school leaders who are able and eager to lead the field on these complex issues. The toolkit contains the…

One of the greatest promises of the charter school movement has been the potential to create diverse school models to meet the varied needs of children, families, and communities. As policy makers and charter leaders have recognized the need to hold charters accountable for strong performance, however, there has been a move towards more…

During the 2015-16 academic year, Georgia's Department of Early Care and Learning (DECAL) piloted three professional development models for Georgia's Pre-K teachers. All three models focused on the Instructional Support domain of the Classroom Assessment Scoring System™ (CLASS; Pianta, La Paro, & Hamre, 2008) and used resources developed by…

Student performance in a high school dual-enrollment chemistry course was compared with student performance in the corresponding traditional college course. The two courses were taught by the same instructor and evaluated using the same American Chemical Society (ACS) standardized examination. Interestingly, the high school dual-enrollment…

Community engagement professionals and partners serve as, work with, study, and build the capacity of boundary spanners. To augment knowledge about these functions, the Weerts-Sandmann Boundary Spanning Conceptual Framework (2010) has been operationalized through a survey instrument to examine community engagement boundary-spanning behaviors by…

Building a stronger teacher workforce requires the thoughtful orchestration of multiple processes working together in a human capital system. This white paper presents a framework that can be used to take stock of current efforts to enhance the teacher workforce in school districts or educational organizations, as well as their underlying theories…

This State-specific summary report serves as an assessment of Georgia's Year 1 Race to the Top implementation, highlighting successes and accomplishments, identifying challenges, and providing lessons learned from implementation to date. Georgia's first-year accomplishments include awarding the State's first five Race to the Top Innovation Fund…

Coaching is an emerging form of professional learning. The article focuses on how coaching may be used to improve the quality of delivery of counseling instruction in the classroom.

This paper describe Georgia's progress in implementing a comprehensive and coherent approach to education reform from the time of application through June 30, 2011. In particular, it highlights key accomplishments over the reporting period in the four reform areas: standards and assessments, data systems to support instruction, great teachers and…

This document contains the performance assessment instruments and criteria which will be applied as part of the certification process for beginning school counselors in Georgia. The purpose of the process is to provide the candidate with an opportunity to demonstrate the essential competencies on the job. While the candidate bears the ultimate…

An overview is provided of the "Authentic Assessment for Multiple Users" project funded by the National Science Foundation to determine whether portfolio assessment can be structured to permit meaningful aggregation for multiple hierarchical users. The research focus was in the context of science and mathematics instruction in grades…

This volume contains the initial draft of a model for assessing students in vocational education programs in Georgia. Addressed in the first section of the draft are some of the components that are believed to be critical in the development of a model for assessing vocational student achievement, including selecting a program for use in developing…

Ten papers presented at the first annual meeting of the Georgia Educational Research Association describe the following topics in educational research: (1) development and evaluation of the Elementary Curriculum Development Program, which involves individualized instruction in grades K-8; (2) reliability of the eighth grade reading subscales on…