The purpose of this study was to evaluate two alternative programs in a North Carolina and South Carolina (SC) public school district to determine if they are effective in delivering constructive interventions that modify student behavior once students have left the programs and have returned to their regular learning environments. This…

Federal legislation is an important lever for improving the equity and efficacy of school, district, and state discipline policies. Legislation should ensure that all students are treated fairly, regardless of race, gender, or class. This paper presents three recommendations for changing federal legislation to accomplish this goal. These…

"Stuck Schools Revisited: Beneath the Averages" shows why a national focus on turning around the lowest performing schools, while needed, is not enough to raise achievement and close gaps. The report analyzes student achievement data from Maryland and Indiana, which reflect the outcomes seen in other states. The results confirm a…

The report summarizes evidence from five studies of student achievement in oversubscribed charter schools and two studies on charter school revenues and outlines a number of recommendations relevant to the federal role in charter schools. While many recommendations are reasonable, those related to charter school facilities and charter school…

Evidence Based Education (EBE) #555 was in response to the request "Is there any new compelling research for turning around low-performing schools?" The articles included in that document are on target, but include articles through 2009. This EBE Request seeks to provide an updated review of recent research (2009-present) regarding school…

This study attempted to determine the effectiveness of schools that have highly qualified teachers, along with a well managed facility, and the administration's perception of the leadership role as an instructional specialist on the outcomes that students displayed. Also, the relationship between two instruments used to determine the quality of…

Charter school research has examined the relationship between charter school mission and issues of school accountability. However, there is a lack of research focusing on how charter school leaders frame and solve problems regarding multiple accountability demands. Given this gap, I investigate the question: How do charter school leaders…

The District Self-Assessment Tool is designed to support districts, unions and Lead Partners, when analyzing their existing collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the intention of making targeted modifications to support the implementation of dramatic reform in the district's lowest-performing schools. By outlining objectives and suggested…

This study estimates the impact of schools' physical resources and teachers' academic press on students' academic achievement in mathematics and reading when a number of important student variables are controlled. Academic press is defined as teachers' emphasis on academic excellence and upholding academic standards (McDill, Natriello, &…

The expansion of charter schools--publicly funded, yet in direct competition with traditional public schools--has emerged as a favored response to poor performance in the education sector. While a large and growing literature has sought to estimate the impact of these schools on student achievement, comparatively little is known about demand for…

The challenges facing American higher education today require transformative action. Amid a global economic crisis that has greatly diminished resources available to colleges and universities, the demands from legislators and the public to improve affordability, increase completion rates, and become more accountable grow more insistent each day.…

This paper aims to investigate the perceptions of primary school leaders about the efficacy of the National College programmes. The findings from six contextually different primary schools reveal that the programmes were perceived to have exerted the least influence on school leaders' personality change and pupil outcomes because many generalised…

This article presents results of a study the author recently conducted on the role of traditional institutional research (IR) offices in support of accreditation activities and institutional effectiveness. The purpose of the study was to confirm or disconfirm the utility of a theoretical model developed by Brittingham, O'Brien, and Alig (2008) of…

The author reports on a new study which reveals that the lowest-performing public K-8 schools often linger in that state for years, neither improving enough to get off accountability life support nor being shuttered completely. The study adds that persistently failing charter schools fare no better than regular public schools. Of 2,025 chronically…

We evaluate the effectiveness of small high school reform in the country's largest school district, New York City. Using a rich administrative dataset for multiple cohorts of students and distance between student residence and school to instrument for endogenous school selection, we find substantial heterogeneity in school effects: newly created…