The federal government, through NCLB legislation, has provided target proficiency goals schools will be accountable to meet. Missouri public elementary schools use these target goals to determine their success. The focus of this study was to examine the highly effective public elementary schools in Missouri that met or exceeded the 2011 Adequate…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the tensions between external accountability obligations, educator's professional values, and student needs. Strategic, cognitive, and moral dimensions of this tension are captured with the central category of integrity. Design/methodology/approach: This is a mixed methods study that compares five…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to examine the means by which principals achieve an impact on student achievement. Research Design: Through the application of structural equation modeling, a mediated-effects model for school leadership was tested, using data from 97 secondary schools in the Netherlands. Findings: The results showed a small…

In 2009, the federal government committed over $3 billion nationwide to help states and districts turn around their worst-performing schools. The U.S. Department of Education intended for the School Improvement Grants (SIGs) to spur dramatic change.This report looks at the results of a field study of the first-year implementation of those grants…

This paper discusses the challenge of making large-scale improvements in literacy in schools across an entire education system. Despite growing interest and rhetoric, there are very few examples of sustained, large-scale change efforts around school-age literacy. The paper reviews 2 instances of such efforts, in England and Ontario. After…

The importance of headship to the success of schools is widely acknowledged. This paper focuses on two related aspects, "transition to" and "development during" the first year in post, and identifies and compares research findings with some of the key literature on transition theory and the development of occupational identity. The paper is based…

In this article, the author makes the point that social studies teachers have a "professional responsibility" to educate students, no matter what protections might or might not be provided by the law, and that "as professionals, their expertise about content, pedagogy, and their students makes it not just acceptable, but mandatory,…

In order to ascertain which school characteristics can explain the differences in effectiveness between schools, important methodological choices have to be made in school effectiveness research. One of these choices relates to the criterion or criteria the researcher wishes to use to compare schools. Should, for example, a school be deemed…

Value-added data provide a viable alternative for gauging school effectiveness--one virtually free of the confounding effects of student demographics and other factors relating to student learning. How is it different from other measuring methods? It concentrates on growth, rather than attainment. This strengthens the concept and measurement of…

We use statewide administrative data from Florida to estimate the impact of attending public schools with different grade configurations on student achievement through grade 10. To identify the causal effect of structural school transitions, we use student fixed effects and instrument for middle and high school attendance based on the terminal…

The literature on effective schools emphasizes the importance of a quality teaching force in improving educational outcomes for students. In this paper, we use value-added methods to examine the relationship between a school's effectiveness and the recruitment, assignment, development and retention of its teachers. We ask whether effective schools…

Federal education policy will soon undergo a major revision, with significant consequences for the state's own policy and practices. This report seeks to help federal and state policymakers consider this restructuring and one of its core questions: How should schools and school districts be held accountable for the academic progress of their…

"PISA 2009 at a Glance" is a companion publication to "PISA 2009 Results", the six-volume report on the 2009 survey conducted by the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). PISA assesses the extent to which students near the end of compulsory education have acquired some of the knowledge and skills that…

School principals face an increasing number of professional demands, especially the challenge of improving student achievement. As such, the purpose of this dissertation is to study the effect of leadership coaching on a school principal's responsibilities related to carrying out these demands. Specifically, the researcher examined a subset of…

Only a quarter of the class of 2008 graduated from Alain Locke Senior High School in Los Angeles after four years. This was unsurprising since nearly 60 percent of the class had left Locke by the end of their sophomore year. A majority of Locke teachers--frustrated with the school's mediocrity--petitioned to allow charter management organization…