This study examines the perceived barriers which prevent school superintendents in the state of Washington from closing the gap between knowing core leadership practices that increase student academic performance and the superintendent's ability to act on this knowledge by implementing them. The theoretical frames established were organizational…

Student mobility is the process of describing how children move from one school to another for reasons other than promotion. Highly mobile students are defined as students who move six or more times during their school career. Schools that experience the constant flow of students moving in and out struggle with delivering consistent and effective…

The national focus on college completion has prompted a number of ambitious education goals, numerous research- and practice-based initiatives, and a spotlight on the need to continually improve higher education access and success. This national dialogue has raised not only public and political will for postsecondary completion, but also a number…

Washington is at crossroads on K-12 education policy. It can continue down the path of top-down accountability; devolve power to states and districts, thereby returning to the status quo of the last century; or rethink the fundamentals and do something different. In "Choice and Federalism: Rethinking the Federal Role in Education," the…

Despite being one of the major reasons for the development of quality assessment, students seem relatively unaware of its potential impact. Since one of the main purposes of assessment is to provide students with information on the quality of universities, this lack of awareness brings in to question the effectiveness of assessment as a device for…

It is generally accepted that Canadian postsecondary education enjoys an international reputation for quality. However, Canada does not have an accepted, national framework to understand, measure, or clearly define the actual quality of the postsecondary education sector. In this, Canada is seen as unique when compared with other developed…

This article profiles William Hite, Jr., a longtime educator and administrator, who began his career more than two decades ago as a high school athletic coach. Hite says his biggest passion is educating young people. And one of the best ways to serve students, he says, is by listening. Hite, 51, assumed his duties as Philadelphia's new…

Collaborative group projects have documented learning benefits, yet collaboration is challenging for students because the educational system values individual achievement. This article explores Scrum, an approach to framing, planning, and managing group projects used in Web-software development. Designed for multi-faceted projects, this approach…

Increasing demands for accountability in educational programming have resulted in increasing calls for program evaluation in educational organizations. Many organizations include conducting program evaluations as part of the job responsibilities of program staff. Cooperative Extension is a complex organization offering non-formal educational…

Evaluation of programs or projects is often perceived as a threat. This is to a great extent related to the anticipated use of evaluation for accountability, which is often prioritized at the expense of using evaluation as a learning tool. Frequently it is argued that there is a trade-off between these two evaluation functions. An alternative…

Research findings, as well as newly adopted curriculum standards, continues to send a message to educators that the work of learning must be shifted from teachers to the ones doing the learning. That's because research and anecdotal evidence suggest that when students manage their own learning, they become more invested in their own academic…

The paper proposes a composite likelihood estimation approach that uses bivariate instead of multivariate marginal probabilities for ordinal longitudinal responses using a latent variable model. The model considers time-dependent latent variables and item-specific random effects to be accountable for the interdependencies of the multivariate…

From its founding as a Quaker school for boys to its evolution into a military school and, ultimately, into the thriving coeducational civilian institution it is today, Widener University has been no stranger to change and transition. It may come as a surprise, therefore, that although it had a mission statement and goals, prior to 2004 the…

The author of this article provides commentary on four articles published in this issue: (1) "Leadership for Rich Learning in High-Poverty Schools" (Oyler and Fuentes); (2) "Suspended in Liminal Space: Special Education Administrators and the Decade of Educational Reform within the NYC School System" (Connor); (3)…

The six American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) leadership competencies that were developed in 2003 and 2004 are broad enough to cover most situations that leaders will experience. However, there are situations in which one or more of the competencies emerge as the most important. As situations change and as new challenges emerge,…