The purpose of this article is to explore the motivation of graduate students in an educational leadership preparation program. Motivation is a key element for academic and professional success because without it little learning or performance takes place. The goal orientation theory of motivation was examined in the context of the educational…

Most statistics courses emphasize the power of statistics. Michele DiPietro's course focuses on the failures. Gay and lesbian studies are certainly fertile ground for bad guesses and unreliable statistics. The most famous number, that 10 percent of the population is gay, was taken from a biased Kinsey sample of white men ages 16 to 55 in 1948, and…

In 2004, the U.S. Department of Education's Policy and Program Studies Service contracted with SRI International and its partner, Policy Studies Associates, to undertake an evaluation of the 21st Century Community Learning Centers. The following evaluation questions informed this study: (1) What is the nature of activities in centers that are…

Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia in 1819 to become a training ground for the leaders of a new republic. The institution has changed a great deal since its founding, but principles connected to "Mr. Jefferson's" legacy abound. One such ideal is student self-governance. Described in institutional literature as a core…

"First-generation" college students, whose parents have not attended college, are an increasing presence at elite colleges and universities. Admitting these students, however, is not enough to ensure that they can take full advantage of the opportunities available to them in college and succeed there. Indeed, research indicates that…

Cross-culture educational leadership researchers have shown in their research that national boundaries make a difference. What works in one nation may not work in another one because of different cultures in schools and across nations. This study aims to better understand the similarities and differences between American and Chinese high school…

Delaware Technical and Community College online courses are not properly focused to ensure instructors are effective in improving student achievement. First time online students are not given the proper tools when navigating online courses at the college. The focus at Delaware Tech should be on improving the format which students use when…

A problem in American education is that rural schools have difficulty recruiting licensed teachers. Teacher shortages in mathematics, science, foreign language, and special education are more acute in rural areas. The purpose of this quantitative descriptive survey study was to examine specific recruiting strategies and newly hired licensed…

In 2005, the governors of all 50 states made an unprecedented commitment to voluntarily implement a common, more reliable formula for calculating their state's high school graduation rate by signing the Graduation Counts Compact of the National Governors Association (NGA). Five years later, progress is steady. Twenty-six states say they have…

The Warren Institute is a multidisciplinary, collaborative venture to produce research, research-based policy prescriptions, and curricular innovation on issues of racial and ethnic justice in California and the nation. The Civil Rights Research Roundtable on Education is an initiative of the Warren Institute that convenes an ongoing learning…

We study how the employment effects of enterprise zones vary with their location, implementation, and administration, based on evidence from California. We use new establishment-level data and geographic mapping methods, coupled with a survey of enterprise zone administrators. Overall, the evidence indicates that enterprise zones do not increase…

In this study, we examine how broad heteronormative discourses circulate, become embodied within, negotiated by, and potentially resisted within a university, a college of education, and educators themselves. We pay special attention to how heteronormative discourses at Southwestern University (SWU) impact the various roles this college of…

This study identifies and examines the key practices of California community college programs that have demonstrated success in improving (or that have shown significant potential to improve) the achievement of underrepresented groups whose educational attainment often lags behind the attainment of relatively well-off White students. Unlike many…

Recent literature on the determinants of academic motivation has shown that parenting and emotions are central elements in understanding students' achievement goals. The authors of this study set out to examine the predictive relationship between parental behaviors during the last year of elementary school and adolescents' achievement goals at the…

The Washington School Board Standards are intended for use by local school boards and individual directors as a common framework for school board governance. Two sets of standards were developed to encourage school boards and individual school directors to subscribe to the highest levels of professional and personal conduct and performance. The…