Despite a growing chorus among conservatives about the problem of politics in the classroom, those on the right have struggled to advance long-term solutions to it. Indeed, up to now, state lawmakers concerned about politics in the classroom have typically faced a binary choice. The following three options to protect students from radical politics…

Over the last 2 decades, policymakers' standards-based accountability reforms in the United States, such as the No Child Left Behind Act, have fundamentally changed public schooling in general and kindergarten specifically. As this has occurred, little is known about how families make sense of these changes in schooling. By sharing findings from a…

Charter school policy represents two simultaneous forms of accountability, in which schools are accountable to both parents and authorizers. This study of a K-8 charter renewal decision interrogates these accountability relationships and the role of race and power in privileging the interests of particular stakeholders over others. Using…

The adoption of interventions for infants and young children with disabilities/delays or at risk of disability/delay is likely to be influenced by sources other than research evidence. Where the available research evidence does influence the choice of intervention, there may be difficulties translating research that has been implemented in a…

Recent policy efforts in early care and education (ECE) have aimed to ensure that all children have access to high-quality ECE programming. However, there is debate about how to most effectively improve ECE quality at scale. The three papers in this dissertation provide new insights into the impacts of two widely-used policies aimed at improving…

The Illinois Educator Preparation Profiles (IEPP) system, housed at the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), provides public information on the performance of Illinois teacher preparation programs (TPPs) across the state. TPPs are scored on 11 indicators grouped into four domains--candidate selection and completion, knowledge and skills for…

We might call this decade the era of early childhood. In the US, federal and state governments invest in the creation of public pre-kindergarten (preK) programs and create standards that articulate goals for practice and benchmarks that can be used to evaluate success. How have these trends provided a context for the evolution of preK curriculum?…

The purpose of this report is to investigate the feasibility of constructing a school-level measure of students' academic growth from kindergarten to grade 3, and to assess the validity and precision of that measure. The study measured schoolwide student growth for reading and math using student growth percentiles based on Maryland's 2014/15…

Pedagogical documentation within early childhood centres is a key component of pedagogy and teacher accountability. In Singapore, documentation is a requirement specified under legislative policies included in the national Pre-school Accreditation Framework, with parents often perceived as the main audience. This paper reports on a study utilising…

Contemporary Froebelian-inspired early childhood education in the United States is challenged by government regulation and accreditation requirements that have arisen alongside neoliberalism in education. Using Critical Policy Analysis and case study examples from a preschool in Atlanta, Georgia, this paper examines the influence of neoliberalism…

This cross-case synthesis gives voice to evaluators in EC-12 and higher education settings who are enacting a state-mandated system of teacher evaluation and support by examining their perceptions of the Texas Teacher Evaluation and Support System (T-TESS). Questions addressed included: How do differently situated school administrators and…

Surveys of teacher preparation program (TPP) completers have become one widely used measure for program accountability and improvement, yet there is little evidence as to whether perceptions of preparation experiences predict the workforce outcomes of teachers. In the present study, we use statewide completer survey data from North Carolina to…

The focus of this report is on mental health interventions delivered in K-12 neighborhood public schools. A vast array of commercially available programs, conceptual frameworks, and approaches to school-based mental health are not unanimously recommended, applied, or agreed upon. This poses a challenge to any comprehensive description or…

Background & Context: Accurate, reliable, and scalable measurement of classroom quality is critical to ensure that children benefit from early childhood programs. Early childhood classroom quality is most commonly measured using classroom observation tools serving multiple purposes including (1) teacher support (e.g., coaching, professional…

Parent-teacher conferences are a means of communicating a child's academic and social growth to parents by the teacher. This form of conference is commonplace in the school setting. Traditionally, these conferences often take place without the primary stakeholder, the student, being present. Student-led conferences offer a positive alternative,…