Background/Context: Market models of school reform are having a major impact on school districts across the country. While scholars have examined many aspects of this process, we know far less about the general effects of marketization on public participation in education and local education politics. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of…

The National Occupational Competency Testing Institute (NOCTI) has been serving the career and technical education (CTE) community for almost 45 years. It is in the unique position to produce longitudinal data that indicates technical competence levels based on end-of-program testing across the country. NOCTI's data confirms that CTE is indeed…

This thesis examines the views of a number of educational actors about the impact of a broad range of educational reforms upon philological Greek Cypriot teachers' professionalism. The empirical component of the study gathers evidence from a variety of educational professionals, and presents data from a series of focus group interviews with…

Workforce development programs provide training and education to welfare recipients to prepare them to obtain and retain employment in their communities. Federal, state, and local investments are made to develop and implement programs. But, do these programs have relationships with local employers to obtain their input to provide the education and…

The first year of teaching is a critical time for professional growth and teacher development requiring emotional and pedagogical support from an experienced mentor. To serve this need, many school districts and counties across the US have developed induction programs for beginning teachers. This study examined 20 First Year Teachers' (FYT's)…

This paper analyzes the effects of a higher education accountability system in Brazil. For each discipline, colleges were assigned a grade that depended on the scores of their students on the ENC, an annual mandatory exam. These grades were then disclosed to the public and colleges were rewarded or penalized based on them. I find that the ENC had…

In this article, the authors offer a descriptive essay outlining the framework and processes of a five-year institutional renewal effort at Bank Street College of Education. Extended the opportunity to participate in the "Teachers for a New Era" (TNE) initiative, a multi-year, multi-million dollar effort to enhance and "radically…

Research Findings: Assessment and accountability have been given prominent attention in the field of education in recent decades. Educators have been debating what assessment is, how it is practiced in school, and how it is used for accountability purposes. A case study was conducted of the assessment practices in a Hong Kong preschool to…

Evaluation and accountability are two of the most popular catchwords employed by higher education reformers in the Western world over the last 25 years. For 25 years governments throughout Western countries have been using evaluation and institutional accountability as policy tools to steer their university systems at a distance. From a…

The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) is the nation's oldest and largest urban school choice program, offering private-school scholarships to low-income students in the city of Milwaukee since 1990. In the early years of the program, voucher schools were not required to test their students, though many of them did so using nationally normed…

Public charter schools have become a bigger and bigger part of the public school landscape. Online education has also grown exponentially over the past decade. In recent years a new instructional model has emerged within the charter school community. This model is known as blended or hybrid instruction. Blended instruction involves some…

This publication is a series of in-depth case studies to examine how three programs which serve a disconnected youth population are utilizing data as a tool for continuous program improvement and ongoing accountability. The report features the following programs: (1) Roca, an organization in Massachusetts which engages the highest-risk youth in…

The SAS Educational Value-Added Assessment System (SAS[R] EVAAS[R]) is the most widely used value-added system in the country. It is also self-proclaimed as "the most robust and reliable" system available, with its greatest benefit to help educators improve their teaching practices. This study critically examined the effects of SAS[R] EVAAS[R] as…

Since the 2004 reauthorization of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), there has been a growing focus on improving the quality of programs for children with disabilities and measuring the results/outcomes of those programs. Across the country, IDEA Part C Programs for Infants and Toddlers and IDEA Part B, Section 619 Preschool…

The state's Race to the Top (RTT) application requires changes to the state's evaluation/accountability system. It requires a teacher effectiveness measure, district effectiveness measure, leader effectiveness measure. Regarding the teacher effectiveness measure, RTT requires linking the data of individual students to individual teachers as part…