The Student Success Network (SSN) consists of about 60 youth development organizations and schools in New York City that are dedicated to improving students' social and emotional learning (SEL) and academic and career success. For organizations to systematically practice continuous improvement, SSN thought perhaps they needed a champion who could…

The U.S. public educational system is antiquated yet designed for the achievement results we see today. All students deserve educators willing to look within, ask difficult questions, have courageous conversations, be vulnerable, and address why schools are continually underperforming. There are researchers and educators determined to do just that…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe the lived experience of administrators in developing school improvement plans. The outcome being sought was an informed framework to build the capacity of administrators to strategically plan for school improvement. The central research question for this study was the following: How do…

Purpose: This mixed-methods study examined the association between the degree to which principal evaluation systems include intrinsic and extrinsic sources of motivation and principals' perceptions of whether their district's evaluation system promotes leadership change and improvement. We also investigated how principals experience intrinsic…

The Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) Standards requires educator preparation programs (EPPs) to ensure instruments used to assess their candidates are both valid and reliable. Due to size and limited financial resources, this task may be challenging for some EPPs. In an effort to address CAEP's expectations, 26 EPPs in…

The focus of the descriptive study utilizing a sequential explanatory design was to develop a comprehensive examination of ongoing development and improvement of an Administrative Professional Program at "Midwest College," a vocational-technical college in the Midwest. A Career Pathway (CP) is a logical, expressed grouping of dynamic…

This program evaluation focused on the Palcare Literacy Innovation Project. The general research problem was to see if the enhanced preschool literacy project would show an improvement in the preschool classroom literacy environment, overall parent participation and a deeper connection to the community over a three-year period. The specific gap in…

Academic researchers dedicated to contributing to quality improvement in professional practice need to find more effective ways to bridge the gap between research and practice. Bridging the gap requires understanding what encourages the use of research findings by practitioners and what discourages it, as well as understanding how practitioners…

Many social policy and education programs start from the assumption that people act in their best interest. But behavioral science shows that people often weigh intuition over reason, make inconsistent choices, and put off big decisions. The individuals and families who need services and the staff who provide them are no exception. From city…

The Community College Pathways initiative is composed of two pathways, Statway® and Quantway® that provide post-secondary students with accelerated means to complete developmental mathematics sequences and attain college-level mathematics credit. Since its inception in 2011, the Pathways initiative has made tremendous strides toward reclaiming…

Background & Aims: Lean methodology is a continuous process improvement approach that is used to identify and eliminate unnecessary steps (or waste) in a process. It increases the likelihood that the highest level of value possible is provided to the end-user, or customer, in the form of the product delivered through that process. Lean…

Research reveals that novice teachers benefit from a well-designed, comprehensive induction program. High-quality induction programs are designed to retain beginning teachers through supports such as mentoring, improving instructional practices, and attending to emotional provisions, to impact both success and satisfaction of novice teachers.…

Why do some teachers choose to leave the profession within the first five years of service? Focusing on one group of 25 former teachers and a second group of 25 current teachers in the rural, North Central, Alabama, area, the researcher studied how the nationally known reasons for teacher attrition found in the literature review applied to this…

This report presents the findings from an external evaluation of Project COMPASS, an effort by Wake Technical Community College to redesign community college online courses to improve outcomes, particularly for students of color. The evaluation used a randomized controlled trial in which students were randomly assigned to course sections taught by…

Research activities often involve enrolling human subjects as volunteers to participate in research studies. Federal regulations mandate that research institutions are responsible for protecting the ethical rights and welfare of human subjects from research risks. This is usually accomplished by requiring approval of research protocols by an…