Examined the influence on schools and classrooms of advisory school councils. Interviews with students, teachers, administrators, and parents from five schools indicated that councils had weak positive to negative influences on schools and classrooms. More influential councils had facilitative principals and used a collaborative team approach.…

High-stakes testing creates a system that is unfair and destructive to learning. This paper critiques several common defenses of high-stakes testing, including claims that this strategy is necessary for addressing educational inequalities. The paper argues that an emphasis on tougher standards, accountability, and standardized testing is uniquely…

Discusses the impact of the 1999 North Carolina General Assembly House Bill 168, which mandated the implementation of performance-based funding for the state's 58 community colleges. States that a college's performance on six of the 12 measures determines its eligibility for supplemental allocation. Questions whether the new standards will affect…

Surveyed graduate students in a practitioner-based teacher education program regarding standards of learning and teacher training. Respondents considered teacher modeling of various instructional strategies and attitudes the most influential instructional strategy. They believed teachers needed training in cultural issues, learning styles, and the…

Indepth interviews with senior managers in six Australian universities revealed messy policy processes and considerable variation in quality policy practices. Quality policy's "big-picture" effect was to enhance national government control of higher education from a distance. A further effect was to increase inequalities among and within…

Leaders bring to new jobs their values and vision, the authority of their position, and their reputation and accomplishments. How new superintendents conduct themselves during the critical entry/"honeymoon" phase affects their subsequent working relationships and leadership effectiveness. Structured interviews with staff, parents, and…

Using schools as a hub, full-service community schools bring together many partners to offer wide-ranging supports to community members every day. Community schools generally foster strong partnerships, share accountability for results, set high universal expectations, build on community strengths, embrace diversity, and avoid cookie-cutter…

The purpose of this narrative inquiry is to share a story of self-reflection and deliberations about issues of ethics, values, social justice, and educational leadership. It begins as a story of reflections about one College of Education team's struggle for authenticity in the development of a new educational leadership program. However, the story…

The rapid growth of charter schools has encouraged innovation and led to new models of schooling. Foremost among these are cyber charter schools where students learn from computer-based lessons beyond the walls of the traditional schoolhouse setting. The authors present the case of cyber charter schools in Pennsylvania. They describe how cyber…

In an age of educational accountability and school competition, the gap between current poor-urban school performance and standards of excellence remains glaringly obvious. As poor-urban schools scramble to "close the gap," many abandon sound pedagogy, becoming entrenched in a curriculum where basic-skills worksheets are the primary method of…

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 mandated statewide accountability testing and focused the accountability conversation on reading. Therefore, the current study examined the relationship between curriculum-based measurement for reading (R-CBM) and state accountability test scores, potential grade differences in relationship magnitude, and…

This paper reports on a professional development intervention coupled with an empirical research study focused on a mentor teacher study group. An unanticipated outcome of the study group was an evident development in the sense of accountability displayed by participants toward the work of teacher education in their school. In effect, teachers'…

Twenty-first century conditions are adding new dimensions to the relationship between states and higher education.

In this article, the author draws attention to the fact that in school evaluations, students will improve on state-mandated tests, but the improved scores will not influence a school's adequate yearly progress (AYP) status because those students' scores do not cross the proficiency point. A state's proficiency point on each of its standardized…

The fates of schools are increasingly intertwined. What leaders do in one school necessarily affects the fortunes of students and teachers in other schools around them. Exemplary or high-profile institutions draw the most outstanding teachers and leaders, draining them away from other schools that, in time, become low-status places in which…