The principal can create dynamic changes across a school and district if they are willing to partner with other educators and policy makers to build trust along a common understanding of the purposes of education. In crafting this shared definition or vision, the instructional leader would be wise to turn to the educational philosopher, John…

Understanding how principals build and support trust can inform school leaders' practice and efforts to retain teachers in the profession. The purpose of this study was to understand teachers' perceptions of principals' trust-building actions and dispositions. A qualitative case study was designed to understand trust as a multifaceted social…

With the proliferation of information on how to use data to inform instruction for more than two decades, district leaders, principals, and other stakeholders assume teachers know how to use the cycle of inquiry process to improve student achievement. This case study is an examination of the practice of data use in seven schools in one urban…

Of the myriad responsibilities of the building principal, the most recognized and critical activity is overseeing and ensuring student success in the classroom. Considering the diverse population of professionals that building principals have under their supervision that directly impact students' classroom learning, the authors posit that a…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate a state-wide teen pregnancy dropout prevention program using cost-benefit analysis. Data analyzed from five high schools covering a decade compared three student populations: teens from the general population, teens who were enrolled in the fully online program, and teens who selected out of the full…

Rural schools face particular challenges with teacher quality. The Northeast Tennessee College and Career Ready Consortium was a collaborative reform effort among rural schools with a key goal of improving the quality of instruction in math and science to support its efforts to expand academically rigorous courses. This study examines progress…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the possibility of a relationship between second-order change leadership behaviors of high school administrators and changes in student achievement on the Florida Standards Assessment English Language Arts/Reading component and the Algebra 1 End of Course examination in two large urban school districts.…

The purpose of this review article was to examine the turbulence of the current educational context in light of COVID-19 and the associated school closures, for disengaged high school students, often over-aged, who are nearing the end of their academic journeys. In this review, I provide a concise overview of the way that the high school dropout…

The purpose of this study is to identify how teachers of Emergent Bilinguals labeled "English Language Learners" (EL teachers) responded to the sudden shift to emergency remote teaching and learning (ERTL) due to COVID-19 in March 2020. Emergent Bilingual teachers from Indiana, Minnesota, and Wisconsin were surveyed during ERTL and this…

The COVID-19 pandemic that began in late 2019 but grew into a national crisis during the first three months of 2020 provides a unique context for researching how educational leaders respond to precarity. For leaders who are also mothers, a group that scholars commonly call mother/leaders (Grzelakowski, 2005), the intersections of personal and…

In March of 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic ushered in unprecedented changes in public education. This study employed a qualitative narrative inquiry research design to explore special education teacher narratives related to their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Analysis of data from daily internship experience journals and virtual focus…

As the pandemic turned instruction entirely remote in several countries, students are presented with the issues of having to re(construct) what these different institutions (university, family) look like, their boundaries, and physical spaces. The transformation to remote education poses extra challenges not only to instructors, but also to…

Within the context of a global pandemic and challenges of adapting pedagogical practice to virtual instruction, four higher education professors came together to share observations and review student feedback regarding their online learning experiences. Using an Appreciative Inquiry (Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987) theoretical framework,…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) provides guidance and expectations to state education agencies. We examined the intersection of improvement science and ESSA through a qualitative analysis of the state guidance documents. Utilizing six principles of improvement as a conceptual framework, we identified three themes: improvement as an outcome;…

School closures, inequitable technology, and diminished access to educational support negatively impacted learning for all students during the COVID-19 pandemic but more so for students with disabilities. In anticipation of learning loss for all students, the Florida Department of Education (FLDOE) mandated each school district to develop an…