High-stakes statewide testing, low levels of knowledge surrounding the benefits of arts integration, and fiscal challenges have led to schools cutting arts programs in servitude toward higher test scores. This phenomenon has affected the existence and level of arts integration present in non-arts courses. The purpose of this dissertation was to…

Despite the vast research on mentoring, little is known about the effect mentoring has on the leadership capacity of first year administrators. Improving student achievement is imperative to public education, and improving school leadership at individual sites will increase student performance. Schools that are raising student achievement in spite…

In lower- and middle-income countries, including Ghana, students in rural areas dramatically underperform their urban peers. Rural schools struggle to attract and retain professionally trained teachers (GES 2012; World Bank 2012). We explore one potential solution to the problem of teacher recruitment: distance instruction. Through a cluster…

The purpose of this study was to examine the current state of pre-kindergarten classrooms in the state of Indiana through the perspectives of public and private pre-kindergarten program directors. Survey results revealed a high concentration of female pre-kindergarten directors within the state of Indiana. Although directors rated their teaching…

Aims: Community outreach services play an important role in infectious disease prevention and engaging drug users not currently in treatment. However, fewer than half of US substance abuse treatment units provide these services and many have little financial incentive to do so. Unit directors generally have latitude about scope of services,…

The Wallace Foundation is funding a multiyear demonstration project to determine whether voluntary, district summer learning programs can stem summer learning loss for low-income students. Six districts--Boston, Cincinnati, Dallas, Duval County (Florida), Pittsburgh, and Rochester, New York--were selected for the demonstration project and…

Objective: The authors describe the current characteristics of geriatrics training within general psychiatry training programs. Methods: In the fall of 2006, a survey was mailed and made available online to all U.S. psychiatric residency program directors (N=181). Results: The response rate was 54% (n=97). Of the responding psychiatry programs,…

The largest issue for schools is not extending the school day or year--as useful as those policies might be--but of meeting time requirements within the constraints of the budgets and personnel given them. Policy makers rarely understand how their policies impact practice. Author Marilyn Crawford suggests a policy-talks-to-practice strategy that…

What turns a good school into a great school? With today's schools under enormous pressure to make adequate yearly progress (AYP), the answers are more important than ever--and this essential guidebook gives K-12 administrators and educators scores of proven, concrete strategies to help their school succeed. Authors Martin Ratcliffe and Melissa…

The purpose of this descriptive, post hoc single case study was to understand how the five components of Teddlie and Stringfield's (1993) school effectiveness model manifested themselves in school improvements efforts. This study used Teddlie and Stringfield (1993) five component school effectiveness conceptual model (focus on academics, orderly…

In the winter and spring of 2007-08, the Center on Education Policy (CEP) expanded its ongoing research on the impact of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) by conducting case studies of six schools in Rhode Island to learn more about the influence of NCLB and related state accountability policies on curriculum, instruction, and student…

The ways in which teachers and administrators manage their time is the focus of this four-part study, which includes: (1) an introductory overview of a 1984 study of K-12 teachers' use of time; (2) a study of special education teachers' use of time in two counties in Georgia; (3) a study of successful elementary principals' time budgeting; and (4)…

This handbook reviews findings from the research literature on effective schools to ascertain their relevance to Language Arts instruction, and to guide school administrators in their efforts to improve instruction for limited English speaking (LEP) students. The following chapters are included: (1) Introduction; (2) Principal as Instructional…

This guide is designed to present a variety of techniques that can be used in conducting classroom observations. Observation techniques are clustered under four major teaching/learning variables: time on task, teacher talk, classroom interaction, and organization and management. Techniques are presented with an overview that details the rationale…

This study examined the ways that workplace contexts influenced the extent to which faculty work behavior is congruent with the mission of the university. Structured observations of six faculty at a research university and six faculty at a comprehensive university were conducted during 1994 and 1995. Each faculty member was observed on five…