Six years after passage of No Child Left Behind and midway to the nation's goal of having students on grade level or better in reading and math by 2014, more data than ever before has been collected about the academic performance of American students and schools. Information in this brochure charts student demographics, achievement-to-date and…

In the fall of 2007, Education Resource Strategies (ERS) was invited by Philadelphia's School Reform Commission to conduct a Strategic Professional Development Review for the School District of Philadelphia (SDP). ERS is a nonprofit organization that is nationally recognized for its extensive work in partnering with urban school districts to make…

Improving high school graduation rates has in recent years become a growing concern to state and local policymakers for a number of reasons: the reduced economic opportunities and increased social costs for individuals without a high school diploma; the economic consequences, such as reduced tax revenues; and the need for more college graduates.…

The Pittsburgh Public School district is one of many urban school systems across the country that is struggling to boost student performance and regain the respect of its community. Achievement gaps are wide; student achievement is low; and public confidence is fragile. To begin addressing these issues, the Council of the Great City Schools…

By the time they enter kindergarten, many low-income children are already behind their peers from more advantaged backgrounds. During early childhood, low-income children face a number of risk factors that threaten healthy development and learning, including low birth weight, stunted growth, obesity, and lead poisoning--all of which are associated…

This paper culminates three years of research on the use of various teaching technologies and methods by the faculty of Adelphi University School of Business in Garden City, New York. Previously, papers on this research were published on the development of the research instrument, the administration and data analysis for full time faculty (Part…

There has been considerable interest recently in the teaching of skills to undergraduate students. However, existing methods for collating data on how much, where and when students are taught and assessed skills have often been shown to be time-consuming and ineffective. Here, we outline an electronic research skills audit tool that has been…

The Asian Tsunami struck Sri Lanka on December 26, 2004. Sri Lanka was the second worst affected country after Indonesia, and this natural disaster killed in excess of 35,000 people and displaced over 1 million. The article explores the Tsunami Disaster Management Program developed by one Sri Lankan university: the Postgraduate Institute of…

This report lays out the design for the Evaluation of Reading Comprehension Interventions, which is assessing supplemental reading comprehension programs for fifth-grade students in Title I schools. The key design parameters are described. The report itself provides the rationale for these decisions and discusses design and measurement issues,…

In the present climate of public accountability, there is increasing demand to show "what works" and what return is gained for the public from investments to improve communities. This increasing demand for accountability is being met with growing confidence in the field of philanthropy during the past 10 years that the impact or effectiveness of…

Education research over the last few decades has focused on the debate over which classroom pedagogies best encourage learning: teacher-centred or student-centred. Although research appears to support the philosophy that student-centred teaching provides for better learning, the supporting research is frequently limited to observational studies or…

Using statistical data collected during a 30-year period, the article reports on the significant movement of females into all of the line administrative positions in the largest school districts in the country (by student population) since the passage of Title IX with one notable exception, that of superintendent. The position of superintendent…

As resources become more constrained in the library community, many organizations are finding that they need to have a better understanding of their costs. To this end, this article will present one approach to conducting a cost analysis (including questions to ask yourself, project team makeup, organizational support, and data organization). We…

Within this paper I report on aspects of a study aimed at not only discovering how and when students use a graphical calculator within an Advanced-Level (pre-University) Mathematics course, and what operations and calculations they perform with such calculators, but also the depth and type of learning that takes place when students use graphical…

Much has been written about the value of teacher research for inservice teachers. Despite the existence of several studies affirming these words, studies that richly describe how student teachers learn to do teacher research and then investigate the impact of inquiry on student teachers and teacher educators, particularly in culturally and…