For the past three years, the faculty and administrators of Diamond Fork Junior High School--a large junior high in Spanish Fork, Utah--have been on an amazing journey of examining the school's educational practices with the intent of improving learning opportunities for all its students. In March 2009, the administrators and the faculty…

Two recent studies by Biancarosa et al. and by Saunders et al. have finally demonstrated that "job-embedded, sustained professional development" can significantly improve student achievement. But there's a catch. In both studies, effective professional development (PD) strategies were successful only under certain circumstances or only in some…

Research shows that well trained and educated early child care and education (ECCE) workers are key to helping children in care reach their full developmental potential. Federal and state governments spend billions of dollars each year to improve ECCE programs, including the quality of its caregivers and teachers. Because of the importance of this…

In January Rep. John Kline (R-MN), chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, released two draft discussion bills to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or ESEA. The Student Success Act and the Encouraging Innovation and Effective Teachers Act would increase state and local control over education. In the…

Although close to half of all community college students leave before obtaining their stated goals, most retention studies are still being conducted at the four-year college and university level. There is still little research conducted at the community college level. In order to determine what student characteristics increase community college…

This dissertation investigates the prevailing No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandate as an effective platform to improve schools. The data compiled for use in this study represented 426 high schools in Pennsylvania and were retrieved from publicly accessible, state-sponsored sources. The statistical methodologies from the Pennsylvania Value-Added…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to discuss how technological tools, such as Web 2.0 and online learning management systems, can be utilized to improve Millennials' educational performance. Design/methodology/approach: An exploratory survey of Millennial business students was conducted to measure their self-reported use and perceived…

The purpose of the paper is to review some previous researches examining ICT efficiency and the impact of ICT on educational output/outcome as well as different conceptual and methodological issues related to performance measurement. Moreover, a definition, measurements and the empirical application of a model measuring the efficiency of ICT use…

Assurance of Learning (AoL) practices can be implemented in a variety of ways, as long as they are geared toward business schools' missions and curricula. The authors first address the purpose of implementing AoL, and briefly evaluate the ongoing debate about the pros and cons of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business's policies…

One of the US Department of Education's key priorities is turning around the nation's persistently low-achieving schools, yet exactly how to identify low-performing schools is a task left to state policy makers, and a myriad of definitions have been utilized. In addition, exactly how to recognize when a school begins to turn around is not well…

This paper considers an alternative teacher certification pathway known as Teach for Australia (TFA) that is currently operating in the Australian state of Victoria. A discursive approach informed by critical theory is used in the paper to critically examine the specific case of TFA as an alternative teacher certification pathway charged with…

In many schools in Australia students often begin their primary years with limited preparation for reading. "All hands on deck" are required to ensure the best possible student success rate for learning to read. In this project, Education Assistants, often under-utilised in schools, were used to implement a reading intervention to…

The need for in-service education for teachers is recognized by all who are concerned with improvement of school practice. A successful in-service education involves many different kinds of activities. This study aims to determine the perceptions of classroom and branch (social studies, science and technology, foreign language, physical education…

The Incredible Years® (IY) program series is a set of interlocking and comprehensive training programs for parents, teachers, and children. This article briefly reviews the theoretical foundations, goals, and research underlying these programs. The main purpose of the paper is to describe how the IY programs have been scaled up slowly and…

Despite much progress in improving the quality of preschool programs, there is still an uneven quality of instruction in early childhood settings. Providing support and professional development (PD) for teachers that is practical, systematic and sustainable is one potential avenue to increase classroom quality in preschool, including quality of…