With the passage of a state constitutional amendment in 2002, Florida school districts faced the challenge of meeting class size mandates in core subjects, such as mathematics, English, and science by the 2010-2011 school year, or face financial penalties. Underpinning the amendment's goals was the argument that smaller classes are more effective…

Although data driven-decision making has been the mantra of school reform for the last 10 years, school leaders benefit from frequent discussions in how to engage teachers in the process. As a result, the purpose of this paper is to apply Reeves' (2004) framework concerning Antecedents of Excellence in creating a school culture that routinely uses…

The introduction of middle schooling in Australia has brought about changes to the working conditions of many teachers including finding themselves in teacher teams. The formation of such teams has been identified as critical to Australian middle school reform with teacher teams underpinning several of the fundamental components of a middle school…

The national Norwegian school reform of 1994, which gave students statutory rights to at least 3 years of upper secondary education, had a significant impact on educational attainment among immigrant youth. In particular, we find that the immigrant transition rate from compulsory schooling to completion of the first year of upper secondary…

Ensuring the success of P-12 public education is a moral imperative. Failure to produce students that are able to compete globally has serious implications to the success of America's economy. In addition, failing to address the academic needs of all students accelerates the achievement gap and leaves out groups of children that need help the…

This case study examined three K-5 schools, one 3-5 school, and two K-2 schools that implemented Michigan's Behavior and Learning Support Initiative (MiBLSi) and showed improvement trends in third grade reading achievement as measured by MEAP results over four years. Each of the six schools completed the three years of MiBLSi training and are…

This study examined the Academic Performance Index (API) and Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) achievement trends between 2004 and 2006 of 58 California public elementary schools after exiting state monitoring and investigated practices for sustaining consistent achievement growth. Statistical methods were used to analyze statewide achievement trends…

Four years following the decimation of the New Orleans Public Schools by Hurricane Katrina the city has been described as the center of a unique urban public school reform effort. This effort is a combination of events that transpired just before the storm and those that have occurred as a result of it. In particular some claim that the emerging…

This paper explores the introduction of market-oriented reforms into school-based education in England and Finland. The contexts into which reforms were introduced differed, with a fully comprehensive system being in place in Finland but not in England; the motives were also different; and different trajectories have since been followed. Whilst…

The author centers on narrative inquiry as a "multilayered and many stranded" form of qualitative research (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000, p. xvii), one that unfurls in the midst of a plethora of social phenomena and other research agendas (Conle, 1999). In the article, the narrative inquiry broadly relates to organized school reform in…

This study expands on the work of Huerta "et al." (2008) by reexamining the relationship between professional development and teacher leadership using more comprehensive measures of each. By confirming Huerta "et al"'s (2008) finding that Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) professional development is a significant predictor of teacher…

Globalisation and social changes in Slovenia, especially the formation of an independent country, adoption of the new constitution and implementation of a multi-party political system have caused changes in the education system as well ("Bela knjiga o vzgoji in izobrazevanju v Republiki Sloveniji," 1996, p. 5). Razdevsek Pucek (1997)…

A high-performing school is described as one where student achievement is high and student and teacher absenteeism is low. Student behavior is such that teachers seldom have to control them or tell them what to do. This results in greater time on task, higher teacher morale, low teacher absenteeism, and improved parental support. One other…

The authors of this monograph assert that by assisting school systems to more closely resemble "high reliability" organizations (HROs) that already exist in other industries and benchmarking against top-performing education systems from around the globe, America's school systems can transform themselves from compliance-driven…

Objective: To discuss implications for educational policy and practice relevant to closing the achievement gap based on the literature review and synthesis presented in 7 articles of the October 2011 special issue of the "Journal of School Health". Methods: Implications for closing the achievement gap are drawn from analyses of current literature.…