Student learning objectives (SLOs) have become an increasingly popular tool for teacher evaluations as an alternative to Value-added Models (VAMs). However, the use of SLOs faces two major challenges. First, the target setting is mostly subjective and arbitrary. Second, there is little evidence on the reliability and validity of the tool. In this…

Special education teachers' practice is influenced by an understanding of special education policy and knowledge of implementation practice. This study examined the perceptions of nine special education teachers related to their interpretation of assessment, progress monitoring, and transition mandates in a large urban district. Qualitative…

We examine more than 1,000 collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) in place across California, Michigan, and Washington. We investigate the prevalence of a set of 43 key provisions between and within these states, providing the first comprehensive comparison of CBA terms using data drawn from economically and demographically different districts,…

As the nation has become increasingly politically divided in the wake of the 2016 Presidential elections, educators have turned their attention to civics education that might have the ability to encourage students to engage productively in public life. In addition, the February 2018 shootings at Parkland High School sparked a nationwide movement…

Across the United States, students attending rural school districts can face different obstacles than their urban counterparts, particularly rural students from households living below the federal poverty level. But how rural districts are defined can vary by federal, state, and local entity and can sometimes not capture the difficulties specific…

In the spring of 2019, the EdWeek Research Center conducted a survey of more than 1,200 K-12 gifted and talented teachers and coordinators to learn more about how districts and schools define, identify, serve, and instruct students in gifted and talented programs. A major objective was to gain a better understanding of the extent to which…

A predictive model of assistant superintendents willingness to become superintendent was created using three factors: personal (age, gender, marital status, and parenthood), professional (district size, district needs, and being mentored), and volition (willingness to appear for multiple interviews, give up their current position, be interviewed…

This study explores the opinions of 42 California superintendents on the LGBT-inclusive instructional provisions and the implementation needs of the FAIR Education Act with school district enrollment size as a considering factor. Few studies have explored the provisions of the FAIR Education Act inclusive of the instructional approaches to…

Levels of governance (the nation, states, and districts), student subgroups (racially and ethnically minoritized and economically disadvantaged students), and types of resources (expenditures, class sizes, and teacher quality) intersect to represent a complex and comprehensive picture of K-12 educational resource inequality. Drawing on multiple…

This article describes a project initiated to address the challenges of providing high-quality professional development to teachers in rural schools. Spread over the vast northwest corner of Colorado, where it takes over two hours to drive from one end of the region to the other, the Northwest Colorado Board of Cooperative Educational Services (NW…

These are the appendices for the report, "State and District Use of Title II, Part A Funds in 2018-19." Title II, Part A of ESEA (Title II-A) provides over $2 billion per year in funding to states and districts to support effective instruction through the preparation, recruitment, and training of educators. The Every Student Succeeds Act…

This study examines how a PD program to promote teachers' shift toward a student-adaptive pedagogy impacts students' multiplicative reasoning. We describe the underpinnings of this pedagogy and main components of the PD program. Then, we present key features of participants, data collection/analysis methods, and the written assessment used to…

The purpose of the study was to determine what student teachers perceive as an effective practice used by their cooperating teacher and school district to enhance the success of the year-long student teaching experience. In addition, the study intended to determine the differences in what student teachers perceive as effective practice based on…

Despite research that high-stakes tests do not improve knowledge, Florida requires students to pass an Algebra I End-of-Course exam (EOC) to earn a high school diploma. Test passing scores are determined by a raw score to t-score to scale score analysis. This method ultimately results as a comparative test model where students' passage is…

In this study, we examined the enactment of formative assessment by administrator-selected master teachers in large, urban, public school districts in three regions of the United States. Furthermore, this study also included an investigation of the perceptions and frequency of use for all teachers within the same districts to gather a snapshot of…