Professional development (PD) for teachers is a ubiquitous feature of the American educational landscape. Yet we know little about how districts navigate the variation in teacher learning needs when designing and implementing district-wide PD programs. In this paper, we describe how the District of Columbia Public Schools implemented an ambitious…

Although research alliances (RAs) have long been seen as mutualistic and reciprocal, RAs face numerous obstacles navigating stakeholders' differing goals, incentives, and information. This longitudinal, comparative case study of two RAs uses principal-agent theory to analyze these interdependent challenges and their relationship to RA strategy and…

Although multiple-measure teacher evaluation systems have gained popularity in the United States, few studies have examined their implementation or how they are shaped by organizational context. New Orleans provides a strategic case to examine the enactment of a state teacher evaluation policy in a highly decentralized setting with variation in…

This article investigates the differences in academic achievement trajectories from elementary through middle school among English Learner (EL) students in four different instructional programs: English Immersion (EI), Transitional Bilingual (TB), Developmental Bilingual (DB), and Dual Immersion (DI). Comparing students with the same parental…

Beginning in 2007, the Literacy Program at the Right Age (Pacto pela Alfabetização na Idade Certa [PAIC]) in Brazil's Ceará state required municipal schools to implement a tiered, whole-school early-grade literacy intervention. This intervention was complemented by other policies to help municipalities improve student achievement. The present…

School improvement activities have commonly been treated as objects of study, constituting "research on" school improvement rather than "design of" school improvement. The key elements in a school improvement effort design involve particularizing for the instant situation the operational referents for the terms: school,…

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's Graduate Education Initiative (GEI) provided funding to 54 departments in the humanities and related social sciences during the 1990s to improve their PhD programs. This article estimates the aspects of PhD programs the GEI influenced and how these aspects influenced attrition and graduation probabilities. It uses…

The following four integrative data analysis strategies for mixed-method evaluation designs are derived from and illustrated by empirical practice: (1) data transformation; (2) typology development; (3) extreme case analysis; and (4) data consolidation and merging. Use of these methods to realize the full potential of mixed-method approaches is…

An evaluation research capability was used to document the design and implementation of two programs in a large urban school district. This paper describes the research context, the origins of the role of resident evaluator, the broad functions of this role, and factors contributing to the usefulness of this approach. (BW)

Evaluation research is no longer taught solely as a technical-scientific pursuit, but is now moving toward a policy-oriented discipline. Psychological skills in a political context can strengthen technical contributions of evaluators. (LMO)

The applicability of employee-involvement approaches to the management of schools is explored, describing three approaches (parallel-suggestion involvement, job involvement, and high involvement). Design issues (technology; organizational structure; leadership; organizational boundaries, customer definition, and relation to stakeholder; measures;…