Given the positive influence of school climate on academic outcomes, several districts--including Chicago Public Schools (CPS)--incorporated climate surveys into their accountability systems, to signal the importance of school climate to schools. The "5Essentials" Survey, developed in Chicago, is currently administered to CPS students in…

Schools located in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods report disproportionately high rates of crime and violence. Theoretical reasoning suggests that school-based parent participation may lead to improved school safety in these settings, but little empirical work has tested this relationship. This study examines the relationship between…

This manuscript reports on the role of the instructional leadership practices of secondary school principals on learner academic achievement. A phenomenological research design under the qualitative research methodology was utilised to explore this phenomenon. The study was conducted in the Capricorn District, Limpopo Province in South Africa.…

Many school employers struggle with teacher turnover challenges despite their use of wide-ranging teacher retention initiatives. Emphasizing a new Talent Centered Education Leadership approach, this article relies on a theory-building methodology that leverages the theories of career choice and Herzberg's motivation-hygiene, empirical literature…

School fundraising is a practice that is common in many schools in the United States. This is also true in high-poverty schools where there are many financial needs that are often not met. Lincoln Elementary School is one of these schools. A well-intentioned first-grade team of teachers develops and works to implement a plan to fundraise using…

An analysis of school district spending across the U.S. reveals 66 districts where the students face much greater needs than in surrounding districts (i.e., child poverty is more than 20% higher) but where per-pupil spending is less than 90% of the region's average. This not only means that they have less money to spend on children who require…

This paper provides three case studies of initiatives developed to improve educational opportunities in vulnerable urban communities. The cities in the three countries involved, Australia, the United States, and Spain, are different in many ways; however, each has persistent and entrenched inequalities between the educational opportunities and…

Well over six decades after the Supreme Court declared "separate but equal" schools to be unconstitutional in "Brown v. Board of Education," schools remain heavily segregated by race and ethnicity. The lack of progress in integrating schools: (1) depresses education outcomes for black students; (2) widens performance gaps…

Each year, school systems plan for how to improve student learning in the coming year. This process involves reviewing student achievement and student progress data, establishing priorities, and building a budget aligned to these priorities using all available funding sources. In an effort to support school systems with this process, the Louisiana…

A coalition of districts and schools serving high-need students in Louisiana are partnering with the nonprofit National Institute for Excellence in Teaching (NIET) to increase equitable access to effective educators for students in high-poverty schools. Through a five-year 2016 federal Teacher Incentive Fund grant, called the LA BOLD (Building On…

The Collaboration and Reflection to Enhance Atlanta Teacher Effectiveness (CREATE) is a three-year teacher residency program that seeks to recruit, support, and retain a diverse, highly effective, and culturally competent educator workforce that is committed to working in high-needs schools and to improving student outcomes. This evaluation…

Educational organizations were experiencing increasing teacher attrition rates, thereby impacting teacher self-efficacy, workplace continuity, and student achievement levels. With this national crisis unfolding, schools struggled to recruit and retain high-quality teachers necessary for organizational success and student mastery of standards-based…

The paper used district level students' pass rate in a nationally conducted basic education certification examination to assess the effect of school electrification on learning outcomes. The results show that school electrification in addition to the traditional school-level inputs, such as class size, pupil-teacher ratio, ratio of core textbook…

The purpose of this study was to determine if there is a statistically significant relationship between teacher emotional intelligence (EI) and classroom climate. School characteristics of Title I and Non-Title I were used to identify the groups of teachers for the purpose of data analysis. The sample of this study was composed of third-, fourth-,…

Schools in Vermont have followed a trend of partnering with out of school time afterschool and summer programs to address academic achievement gaps for students that are socioeconomically disadvantaged. The theoretical framework that informed this study was based in constructivist theory and experiential learning. The problem addressed in this…