There is a significant strand of theory and research about turning around underperforming organizations; however, very little of it speaks to the unique mission and character of schools. This literature is unambiguous in its claim that leadership is the pivotal explanation for success, suggesting that efforts to better understand the nature of…

When Gabrielle Carpenter became a guidance counselor in Northern Virginia nine years ago, she focused on the academic achievement gap and furiously tried to close it. At first, she was compelled by tremendous professional interest. However, after seeing her son lose his zeal for school, Carpenter joined forces with other parents to form an…

Pests, population growth, and depleted soil have wreaked havoc on agriculture in Africa, so universities across the continent are rethinking how they teach the topic. Some African universities have been building their own networks and pooling their limited resources to train more agricultural scientists and improve their responsiveness to the…

"Webster needs an extreme makeover," students told Principal Joan Brixey upon her arrival at Daniel Webster Middle School in Waukegan, Illinois, three short years ago. The message came in a student-produced video that highlighted things that needed repair at Webster. Brixey was already a firm believer in the proposition that students…

"The Impact of Alignment Coaching on Christian Teachers' Worthy Performance" uses Human Performance Technology and "teleonomics" (Gilbert 2007) to document several intersecting vantage points as one performance improvement system of alignment coaching (AC). Coaching relationships and accomplishments of consistently (daily) reading the Bible,…

In 1998, Washington State had 51,512 classroom teachers, but only 29 of them were National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs). By 2009, the number of NBCTs in Washington had grown to 3,975--5th in the nation in total numbers, and 2nd in the nation in new teachers certifying that year. The state's successful strategy for increasing the number of…

How can schools respond to the call to equip all students with the math skills required in college and the workforce when students are working at widely varying skill levels? Offering extended instructional time in algebra, or double-dose instruction, offers one potential solution to this dilemma and has become an increasingly popular approach for…

The use of the Global Positioning System (GPS) and Global Information Systems (GIS) has made significant impacts on agricultural production practices. However, constant changes in the technologies require continuing educational updates. The outreach program described here introduces the operation, use, and applications of GPS receivers and GIS…

According to the national statistics compiled by researchers and the federal government, there is a grim academic future for the students in low-income urban and rural communities across the U.S. They have no more than a 50% chance of graduating from high school, and those who do graduate will perform at the level of eighth graders in high-income…

This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of in-service courses conducted by the Ministry of National Education in order to inform teachers about the changes introduced by the new primary and secondary school curricula. The study also aims to reveal whether these changes have entered the classrooms based on the teachers' views of the INSET…

Evaluating the impacts of public school funding on student achievement has been an important objective for informing education policymaking but fraught with data and methodological limitations. Findings from prior research have been mixed at best, leaving policymakers with little advice about the benefits of allocating public resources to schools…

As a strategy to promote the Arapahoe Community College Library's collections and services, the Library undertook to brand itself as a math resource center. In promoting one area of expertise, math was selected to help address the problem of a large portion of high school graduates' inability to work at college-level math. A "Math…

In winter semester 1995, Schoolcraft College, in Michigan, experienced a 7% drop in enrollment and an 8% drop in credit hours, including 461 students who applied but did not enroll. To determine the reasons that the no shows had for not enrolling and how many planned to enroll in the future, demographic data were collected from application…

In an effort to establish a quality middle grades teacher education program that would be responsive to local needs, the Middle Grades Education (MGE) faculty at Georgia's Valdosta State University implemented Reality 401, a field based program, in Fall 1992. The program is a senior year teacher education program designed to provide a…

Retention strategies at New York's Bronx Community College (BCC) aim to keep students enrolled long enough to realize their educational or occupational goals. Actual practices, however, can be categorized into distinct patterns which can provide a basis for planning the future mission of counseling. Some strategies are designed to sort the student…