The federal School Improvement Grants (SIG) program, to which $3 billion were allocated under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), supports schools attempting to turn around a history of low performance. School turnaround also is a focus of Race to the Top (RTT), another ARRA-supported initiative, which involved a roughly $4…

Pursuant to the recommendations and findings in Dr. Barnett Berry's policy brief, the proposed set of legislative enactments presented in this paper offers both monetary incentives and positive working conditions requirements likely to further three goals: (a) cause more effective teachers to choose to work in high-need schools and fields, (b)…

The Common Core State Standards Initiative, in its aim to align diverse state curricula and improve educational outcomes, calls for K-12 teachers in the United States to engage all students in mathematical problem solving along with reading and writing complex text through the use of rigorous academic content. Until recently, most teacher…

In 2007, using funds from the federal Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) and private foundations, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) began piloting its version of a schoolwide reform model called the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP). Under the TAP model, teachers can earn extra pay and take on increased responsibilities through promotion (to mentor…

The research literature is full of articles that address the stresses and strains of the special education profession. Many of these articles have described in detail the pressures that special education teachers face day in and day out. To address the ongoing issues of high stress levels, burnout, and attrition in the special education field, the…

This article examines an innovative way of conceptualizing mentoring and develops the notion of a "distributed" model of mentoring, backed by snippets from professional development program that has sought to use the context of community to broaden the definition (and success) of mentoring for mathematical teachers. The author proposes a way of…

This Yearbook begins with the article representing Ellen Jampole's presentation to the CRA membership. In her presidential address, Ellen had the audience alternately laughing, considering, and reminiscing about how she and other academics understand and develop the knowledge they carry. She shares these same themes in her narrative, "Traditions,…

The call for highly qualified teachers that can improve student literacy performance has led to increased attention to job-embedded approaches to professional learning. Such approaches call for intensive, on-going efforts that include coaching and feedback (National Staff Development Council, 2001; American Educational Research Association, 2005)…

This document suggests changes to the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in four targeted areas. Regarding Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) supports: (1) Setting challenging but demonstrably attainable student progress goals; (2) Judging school effectiveness by measuring progress of the same students over…