Violence directed toward teachers has been understudied despite significant media and empirical investigation on school violence, such as student-to-student victimization and bullying. To date, there are relatively few published studies scattered across many countries. To address this void, the American Psychological Association, in collaboration…

School district officials have faced the urgent task in recent years of ensuring that all schools, not just a lucky few, benefit from sure-footed leadership by professionals who know how to focus on instruction and improve it. The question boils down to this: How can districts develop a pipeline of great school principals? Research about a Wallace…

In order to enhance Extension evaluation efforts it is important to understand current practices. The study reported here researched the evaluation behaviors of county-based Extension professionals. Extension professionals from eight states (n = 1,173) responded to a survey regarding their evaluation data collection, analysis, and reporting…

The Common Core State Standards' emphasis on informational text arose in part from research suggesting that employers and college instructors found students weak at comprehending technical manuals, scientific and historical journals, and other texts pivotal to work in those arenas. The common core's vision of informational text includes literary…

Over the past three decades policymakers have been seeking new ways to secure improved performance from higher education institutions. One popular approach has been performance funding, which involves use of a formula to tie funding to institutional performance on specified indicators. This report reviews findings from studies on performance…

The National Center on Scaling up Effective Schools (NCSU) is a five-year project working to develop, implement, and test new processes to scale up effective practices in high schools that districts will be able to apply within the context of their own unique goals and circumstances. This report describes the activities and findings of the first…

The core work of the National Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools consists of four stages: identifying practices of highly effective high schools, designing interventions and transfer of practices, evaluating the intervention's implementation and effects, and evaluating implementation at scale. The purpose of this report is to describe the…

Despite the popularity of performance funding among policymakers and policy advocates, only half of all states have ever created a performance funding system for higher education. State performance funding systems have also been surprisingly unstable. Nearly half of those states that established performance funding systems for higher education…

This paper addresses the possible content and organization of a National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) "Mega Report" based on the most populous five states and the largest metropolitan areas in each of them, namely California, Florida, Illinois, New York, and Texas. It is not a "design" but is much more than an outline,…

The purpose of this paper is to promote local norms as a new way of reporting Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) results for Miami-Dade County district. The norms would: (1) show a student's relative standing in the district, and (2) show the student's growth compared to similar students. This paper presents questions about local norms,…

The reliability of evaluators' judgments was investigated, using a discrepancy evaluation model within a program evaluation context. Two research problems were addressed: the degree of evaluator reliability in detecting and rating problems in federal educational project planning, management, and evaluation; and the relationship between inter-judge…

"Positive Action," a K-12 program, aims to promote character development, academic achievement, and social-emotional skills and to reduce disruptive and problem behavior. The program is based on the philosophy that you feel good about yourself when you think and do positive actions, and there is always a positive way to do everything.…

Project LECA (Local Environment in III Century America) was designed by Hillsborough Community College as a 10-month series of seminars, forums, speeches, public debate, and other events on environmental concerns that affect the nation, state, and the Tampa Bay Area. In all, 2,380 persons have participated directly in the LECA programs held, which…

To determine the degree of computer utilization for administrative and instructional purposes at Polk Community College, a comparative study was made of the 26 Florida community colleges that have computer systems in order to ascertain: (1) the extent of computer utilization for administration and instruction, and (2) the cost of the computer…

The implementation of a Planning, Budgeting and Evaluation System (PPBES) and a Management Information System (MIS) at Polk Community College will consider the needs, the objectives, and the priorities of the college. The tasks in the development and implementation of a PPBS system are: development of an implementation plan (specific tasks…