Over the years, most states and districts have focused professional development on teachers rather than principals. However, evidence suggests that principals can play an important role in reaching our national goals of high achievement for all students. School leaders are powerful levers for change--when given the right training and support. But…

At least 5,000 public schools have failed to meet their academic achievement targets for at least five consecutive years. The underlying causes of such failure are usually a combination of weak leadership, inadequate skill levels among teachers, and insufficient high-quality teaching materials. In 2009, the National Governors Association Center…

Across the country, states and school districts are focusing on turning around the nation's lowest-performing schools. Unprecedented federal Race to the Top and School Improvement Grant funding accompanied by a more prescriptive approach for using the funds has raised the profile of turnaround efforts. This focus on school turnaround, while…

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), jobs in computer systems design and related services--a field dependent on high-level math and problem-solving skills--are projected to grow by 45% between 2008 and 2018. Further, more than one in four (26%) of all new jobs created in the U.S. economy during this time will be in the healthcare and…

The author has over the past several years been involved with Hawai'i's Kamehameha Schools on a project called the Hawaiian Cultural Influences in Education (HCIE) study. Kamehameha Schools was established to provide educational opportunities to improve the capability and well being of people of Hawaiian ancestry. In this paper the author…

Before and during the tenure of Florida's former education commissioner, Eric J. Smith, the state made bold moves toward incorporating charter schools, began corporate "scholarship" programs that provide funding for students to attend private schools, implemented class-size caps that voters approved via referendum, and earned $700…

The Yakutia Republic is currently working to update its early childhood development (ECD) system. Its goal is to ensure a high quality environment for early learning and child care and to enable higher enrolment levels. Currently, a high priority for the Government of Yakutia is to increase access to pre-school education, given the significant…

Concept papers and quality circles help future dissertation advisors improve doctoral student success in the completion of the Ph.D. and increase retention. Through these tools, students navigate the conceptual development of a topic and evaluate final drafts of chapters. Implementation of these innovations indicates positive trends in the…

Introduction: No educational method or combination of methods will facilitate implementation of clinical practice guidelines in all clinical contexts. To develop an empirical basis for aligning methods to contexts, we need to move beyond "Does it work?" to also ask "What works for whom and under what conditions?" This study employed Success Case…

Today's high-stakes testing world has changed the English classroom a great deal, and perhaps one of the most dramatically affected areas has been that of creative writing. As all English teachers well know, creative writing does not easily lend itself to a multiple-choice test or a five-paragraph essay. As the authors began the push to prepare…

Ethiopia is a large country in the Horn of Africa. It has a diverse population of eighty million people who speak over thirty distinct languages. Approximately 80% of the population live in rural areas and rely on subsistence agriculture. Despite economic growth and an abundance of natural resources, it is a country with a per-capita income of…

It has become accepted wisdom that there is a shortage of leaders in the library profession. A number of leader and leadership development programs have emerged in Australia, Canada and the United States that attract interested participants, yet what is the core purpose of these programs? Do they work? Review of leadership programs reveals that…

There are few instances in the literature on urban school reform that have closely studied specific school buildings to describe the grant resource appropriation process. This study attempts to fill that gap by developing case studies of two middle schools with divergent profiles in resource utilization through micro-ethnographies. One school…

The research addressed the interplay of student engagement and quality enhancement mechanisms in the Scottish higher education system. The paper demonstrates increasing focus on student learning, learning experience and high-quality learning in the current quality enhancement approaches. The student-university coproduction model is used to…

This article presents an interview with Cathy Carnahan, the 2011 MetLife/NASSP National Middle Level Principal of the Year. Carnahan makes adult learning a priority to support student achievement at Duniway Middle School in McMinnville, Oregon. She describes her school as a community of learners that is a safe setting for teachers to lead and…