This study explores spillover effects between national security and education issues. I examine whether the rise of new foreign threats is correlated with education issues rising onto the congressional agenda and with the passage of education laws. To answer this question several data sources on military conflicts and congressional activity from…

Executive leadership of the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) initiated a flexibility offering from No Child Left Behind. Our work explores specific design decisions made in these state-specific accountability systems as associated with state political environments, resources, and demographic characteristics. Our analysis, focused on 42 states…

Teacher preparation programmes (TPPs) find many ways to shape the development of their teacher candidates while bridging the research to practice gap in university and school partnerships. Recently, accountability models built on high-stakes standardised student assessments (Value-Added Models [VAM]) have been mandated as a way to evaluate the…

Little research has been conducted examining advocacy efforts in the school library field despite the fact that program advocate is a prominent role for school librarians. One element of advocacy is the engagement in political initiatives that may affect school library programs. This case study investigates the effectiveness of one advocacy effort…

One of the modifications of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (known as the No Child Left Behind Act) gave parents of low-income students in low-performing schools a choice of Supplemental Educational Services (SEdS). SEdS include tutoring or other academic support services offered outside the regular school day, at no charge to students…

Using assessment data to determine student growth has become an integral part of the accountability movement, and researchers and educators are currently examining how new rules impact the academic assessment of gifted learners. In 2008, the Association for the Gifted's Annual Symposium at the Council for Exceptional Children Convention focused on…

The challenge of improving the performance of public schools has been given attention from a variety of advocacy groups, researchers, government agencies, education organizations and schools. Since the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 2002, titled No Child Left Behind, the stakes for public schools are higher.…

Little research currently examines language instruction educational programs (LIEPs) in states with a more recent growth of the Latino English learner population. To meet this need, the authors examined the content each of the state LIEPs, focusing chiefly on the extent to which the types of language support, as well as the stipulations associated…

As education stakeholders look ahead to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) reauthorization, there is near-universal consensus that the current federal accountability and school improvement systems need to be reinvented, infused with more and better data, and tailored to meet the individual needs of schools and students. Now,…

In this empirical study, teacher reported knowledge, use, preparation, and importance of higher-level thinking summative assessment questions were analyzed. This study was conducted using a survey distributed to seven Minnesota high schools that represented urban, suburban, and rural settings. Survey responses were cross tabulated with demographic…

Graduates of a post-baccalaureate secondary education program working on certification in five core subject fields served as a sample for transcript review to investigate how well the variables of number of hours completed for content major course work, the content major grade point average (GPA), and the age of content major course work predicted…

This study concerns the "highly qualified teacher" provisions of the "Elementary and Secondary Education Act" ("ESEA," 2002), as reauthorized, and other policies at the federal, state and local levels, which have aimed to elevate the content knowledge of teachers. This examination of "Praxis II" score trends…