Today's accountability policies and changing demographics have created conditions in which leaders must rapidly build school capacity and improve outcomes in culturally diverse schools. This article presents findings from a mixed-methods evaluation of an Arizona Turnaround Leadership Development Project. The project drew on studies of…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the relationship between the length of superintendent tenure, longevity, and continuity relative to student achievement as evidenced by the 2008-2009 Grade 3 New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge (NJ ASK) in Language Arts. The researcher focused on New Jersey school districts in the…

Professional educators in the classroom, library, counseling center, or anywhere in between share one overarching goal: ensuring all students receive the rich, well-rounded education they need to be productive, engaged, citizens. This regular feature explores the work of professional educators--their accomplishments and their challenges--so that…

The importance of middle leaders in bringing about improvement in schools is well recognized in the UK, as in many other countries, with the ever-present demand for raising standards and achievement. This article outlines some initial findings and discussion points emerging from the first stage of a project exploring how middle leaders in…

School leaders face potential conflicts between the demands of national and local education policy and the values and ethics that brought them into teaching and subsequently into school leadership. This article asks whether head teachers' values are changed by the policy context, and looks at incidents in head teachers' professional…

This study describes research that was designed to explore the reflections and perspectives of staff who had experienced the change from institutional care to person-centred care and learn what factors had supported the change to, and continued adoption of, person-centred care. In-depth, semistructured interviews were conducted with seven…

As one component of a program improvement grant provided by the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEPs), the authors' teacher preparation program (TPP) underwent substantial program redesign. In this article, the authors provide a detailed overview of the process they undertook to revamp their program based on the fundamental question,…

This case focuses on one parent's request to have his daughter exempted from district-mandated computer tests (called STAR Enterprise tests). These tests are administered several times per year as a formative assessment to gauge student achievement in the areas of reading and math. The parent was concerned that the district was spending too…

Implications of the multiple-use of accountability assessments for the process of validation are examined. Multiple-use refers to the simultaneous use of results from a single administration of an assessment for its intended use and for one or more additional uses. A theoretical discussion of the issues for validation which emerge from…

Literacy engagement is critical to the development of reading proficiency. Yet, many students, having had varied and often limited experiences with formal literacy practices, begin schooling in an interstitial state that might more accurately be called "pre-engagement" where though eager to learn, they are unsure how to fully focus on…

Competence frameworks and standards are increasingly used by professions in the UK, driven by pressures for professional accountability, and particularly by the trend towards assessing practice before fully-qualified status is granted. A review of 40 UK frameworks indicated that most are concerned primarily with the ability to undertake work…

Equalities legislation in Britain has in recent years shifted towards requiring public bodies to proactively promote equality rather than simply prevent discrimination. This paper reports on a study of how this requirement, with specific reference to race equality, is enacted in the regulation and inspection of initial teacher education (ITE) in…

The structure of the English school system has been the subject of almost continuous change since the late-1980s. The most recent was commenced by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition government, which was elected in May 2010. This policy set in train, very quickly, processes through which all schools have been encouraged, and in some cases…

Choice of a new president is a decision of great importance to individuals within the organization and to the community the college serves. An issue in the search process is the continued domination of presidential candidates by Whites, particularly White males, contrary to changing demographics of student and national populations. For the most…

The massive adoption of technology in learning processes comes with an equally large capacity to track learners. Learning analytics aims at using the collected information to understand and improve the quality of a learning experience. The privacy and ethical issues that emerge in this context are tightly interconnected with other aspects such as…