The public charter school movement has grown rapidly in the 20 years since the first public charter school opened in 1992, with over 5,600 schools now serving more than two million students. One of the most exceptional developments within the first two decades of the movement has been the rise of high performing public charter schools with…

Using a causal-comparative research design, this study analyzed and compared absence data of teachers in relation to specific teacher demographics to determine if certain teachers were more susceptible to absenteeism than others. Additionally, school level placement and whether or not a teacher was teaching in a Title I school were analyzed to…

The signing of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001 created a need for Title 1 principals to conceptualize and operationalize parent engagement. This study examines how three urban principals in Arizona implemented the mandates of the Act as it pertains to parent involvement. The purpose of this qualitative case study is to examine how principals…

This project combines qualitative and quantitative data to provide a comprehensive examination of mentoring practice in an attempt to understand the ways in which mentoring leads to positive outcomes for beginning teachers and their students in AISD during 2010-2011.

This study examines the allocation of novice primary teachers in Chilean schools, looking at their characteristics and at the attributes of the schools at which they are hired after having completed their initial teacher training. The study reveals that in Chile, more qualified novice teachers are more prone to get jobs in socio-economically…

Even as they struggle to climb out of deep financial holes, states are facing lawsuits that contend they do not meet their constitutions' requirements to provide sufficient funding to districts and fail to provide resources for disadvantaged schools and student populations. This article reports on legal battles in Texas, Colorado, and elsewhere…

This report from the Study of School-Level Expenditures presents findings on how state and local education expenditures at the school level vary within school districts. This study is not examining compliance with the current Title I comparability requirement, nor does it examine the comparability of resources between districts. Rather, it focuses…

Rundown, vermin-infested buildings. Rigid, slow-to-react bureaucratic systems. Children from broken homes and declining communities. How can a teacher succeed? How does a student not only survive but also come to thrive? It can happen, and "As Bad as They Say?" tells the heroic stories of Janet Mayer's students during her 33-year tenure…

This study, sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) in the U.S. Department of Education, examines whether some early elementary school math curricula are more effective than others at improving student math achievement in disadvantaged schools. A small number of curricula, which are based on different approaches for developing…

It's hard to imagine two schools superficially more different from each other than Blackstone Elementary, with its labyrinthine 1970s layout, and Orchard Gardens K-8 School, which opened in 2003, with its modern skylights and cheery primary-color accents. But they were similar in the way that matters most in young lives: Both Boston schools were…

This research examines national data on the status of the minority teacher shortage--the low proportion of minority teachers in comparison to the increasing numbers of students of color in schools. The authors show that efforts over recent decades to recruit more minority teachers, and place them in disadvantaged schools, have been very…

This study explores how structural, compositional, and cultural characteristics of the teacher workplace affect an individual teacher's trust in colleagues. In particular, we investigate whether a homogeneous staff culture facilitates trust among teachers. Multilevel analyses on data of 2,104 teachers across a representative sample of 84 secondary…

A prominent feature of education discourse relating to teachers' practice has been the call for increased emphasis on professional development (PD). This paper is part of a wider project which explored the impact of a collaborative PD initiative on teachers' teaching and learning in five urban disadvantaged schools in Ireland. It focused on the…

This article presents results of a case study of a math circle designed for low income, minority students from an inner city middle school. The students were 6th, 7th and 8th grade African American and Hispanic males enrolled in a science, technology, engineering and mathematics focused charter school. The study focused on the impact of…

The purpose of this study is to outline a partnership program that involved a local elementary school district, an institution of higher education, the local business community, and a state economic education advocacy group to integrate economics into math in grades K-5. The "Economics: Math in Real Life" program was provided in…