The NASA Education Implementation Plan (NEIP) provides an understanding of the role of NASA in advancing the nation's STEM education and workforce pipeline. The document outlines the roles and responsibilities that NASA Education has in approaching and achieving the agency's and administration's strategic goals in STEM Education. The specific…

School performance pressures apply disproportionately to tested grades and subjects. Using longitudinal administrative data and teacher survey data from a large urban school district, we examine schools' responses to those pressures in assigning teachers to high-stakes and low-stakes classrooms. We find that teachers who produce greater student…

Initiatives to increase leadership accountability coupled with efforts to promote data-driven leadership have led to widespread adoption of instruments to assess school leaders. In this paper we present a decision matrix that practitioners and researchers can use to facilitate instrument selection. Our decision matrix focuses on the psychometric…

While the field of educational data mining (EDM) has generated many innovations for improving educational software and student learning, the mining of student data has recently come under a great deal of scrutiny. Many stakeholder groups, including public officials, media outlets, and parents, have voiced concern over the privacy of student data…

In partnership with the Center for Juvenile Justice Reform (CJJR), the National Evaluation and Technical Assistance Center for the Education of Children and Youth Who Are Neglected, Delinquent, or At-Risk (NDTAC) has developed a series of practice guides that provide concrete strategies for adopting the principles and practices discussed in the…

This white paper provides a snapshot of available policies and guidance related to online learning and students with disabilities from a small group of states that require online experience as part of high school graduation or report a higher number of online course enrollments. The Appendix allows for a quick scan of the following 12 elements…

Across the Middle East and North Africa region the quality of education has been highlighted as an issue of concern by the World Bank, in particular the less than positive impact on economic development. Also, it has been found that improvement initiatives often fail if they are transferred from the Western world without the consideration of local…

In August 2006, in accordance with a recently passed charter school law, a Mid-Atlantic school district opened its first public charter schools. The charter schools' staff had opportunities to exercise autonomy over their instruction and had very little in-service training. This study examined what seven teachers at a newly created charter school…

The state of Indiana is undergoing substantial educational reform, as is the nation. Educational leaders are in great need of support as they address reform initiatives. The support that educational leaders receive from mentors/coaches may be a determining factor in how they embrace the latest reform and work with their school communities. The…

Educational accountability has come to be defined almost exclusively in terms of schools meeting external standards of improvement. Building on a body of scholarship that presents schools as complex organizations, this research proposes that a more robust understanding of educational accountability must be grounded in practitioners perceptions of…

Thousands of schools across the country are chronically low performing, and they operate within districts and states that are struggling to help them improve. The School Improvement Grants (SIG) program is designed to channel federal funds to states and districts facing the task of turning around struggling schools. SIG, a part of the Elementary…

This article presents the author's critiques on Jim Garrison's essay and focuses on Garrison's concerns about the affronts posed to democracy by the standardization and accountability regimes in education. He rightfully highlights a few critical ways by which standardization and accountability in education reflect and reinforce antidemocratic…

Schools, districts, and state-level educational organizations are experiencing a great shift in the way they do the business of education. This shift focuses on accountability, specifically through the expectation of the effective utilization of evaluative-focused efforts to guide and support decisions about educational program implementation. In…

In September 2011, the author published "School Wars: the battle for Britain's education." Since then she has been travelling around the country engaging in intense debates with parents, teachers, politicians and students about the current state of state education. It has been an interesting experience for it has brought her, a…

A key assumption in efforts to implement and improve cross-government public reporting systems is that legislators will make use of the performance information to enhance accountability and improve program and policy effectiveness. This five-year study is an assessment of expectations and actual uses of annual performance reports by elected…