Parents often select schools by relying on subjective assessments of quality made by other parents, which are increasingly becoming available through written reviews on school ratings websites. To identify relationships between review content and school quality, we apply recent advances in natural language processing to nearly half a million…

Preliminary investigations reveal that some academic staff find it difficult to adapt use of e-learning facilities for delivery academic duties which could lead to job ineffectiveness. The study, investigated the extent to which e-learning facilities availability, usability and adaptability predict job effectiveness among academic staff of…

Because of the many special characteristics of charter schools, policy makers who aim to promote a system of charters schools that ensures fair access to, and fair treatment of, disadvantaged students will need a public accountability system oriented, at least in part, to equity concerns. Massachusetts, with its single statewide authorizer, as…

To support school improvement, understanding the mechanisms that enhance teachers' engagement in professional learning activities within schools over time is paramount. The purpose of this three-wave longitudinal study is to examine the role of workplace conditions (school leaders' vision building and teams' shared goals), in supporting teachers'…

The purpose of this article is to provide Catholic educators, administrators, families, and broader parish communities an understanding of critical elements required to effectively include all students, particularly those with disabilities, in Catholic schools. With an understanding that Catholic schools enroll and will continue to add not only…

Schools must cooperate with parents to be effective. "Families are critical to children's educational success" as Sheldon (2018, vii), declared. The history of cooperation with parents is quite old. One effective way of cooperating with parents is home visits. The impacts of home visits on school-parent cooperation and student outcomes…

Each year, ACT releases data on the most recent class of high school graduates. In addition to providing an objective and standardized measurement of readiness used in college admissions decisions, the data provided by the ACT® test can be used to inform states, districts, schools, teachers, parents, and students themselves about students'…

The "IDRA Newsletter" serves as a vehicle for communication with educators, school board members, decision-makers, parents, and the general public concerning the educational needs of all children across the United States. The focus of this issue is "Teaching Quality." Contents include: (1) State Policy Recommendations for…

In March 2022 a random sample of one third of Stride K12 families (37,856) were emailed a survey asking parents a series of questions about their families' experiences in their children's current Stride K12-powered online schools and their experiences in their children's former schools. 1,949 parents completed the survey, and of that total, 1,613…

This study highlights the collaborative efforts undertaken to create a temporary school called "Futuro Brillante" in San Diego County, California, to provide educational services for more than 3,000 unaccompanied undocumented minors who had newly arrived in the U.S. The study describes the compelling trajectory of the school's…

As community schools spread across the country, community school staff need effective approaches to engaging families and community-based partners. Such principles must be broadly applicable, given community schools' mandate to adapt to different local contexts. Based on recent research on Baltimore City's community schools, the authors highlight…

The appointment of Betsy DeVos as education secretary of the United States has led to much debate across the nation about public charter schools. Opponents of charter schools typically argue that these schools fail if their average standardized test scores do not exceed those of traditional, district-run schools. These types of comparisons,…

The state government uses turnaround models to improve chronically low-performing schools. The effectiveness of this intervention is not yet known. There was a need for research to identify the extent to which state regional education agencies and the school units they served aligned school structures and systems health to create a model for…

This mixed-methods study examined what reform efforts are happening in high schools where students are demonstrating high academic growth, investigating the practices and behaviors principals are implementing within these schools, and determining if, and how, the six dimensions of PLCs (Hord, 1997; Hord & Tobia, 2012) are being implemented in…

For the last 50 years, social, educational, and behavioral scientists investigating the relationships among school socioeconomic (SES) composition and educational outcomes have demonstrated time and again that schools with higher concentrations of students living in poverty provide less than optimal teaching and learning conditions, and they are…