This quantitative study investigated the impact of leadership behaviors and additional factors on teacher morale across seven schools from three Arkansas school districts. The study utilized the "Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI)" and "Purdue Teacher Opinionaire (PTO)" as measurement tools to explore various leadership…

A diverse, urban district's Personalized Learning Initiative (PLI), committed to transforming instructional tasks through integration of technology, created spaces for collaboration, voice, and choice for the PLI teachers and students. The teachers and students used various web-based technologies for collaboration with their peers, had more…

This paper considers the emancipatory potential of incorporating youth participatory action research (YPAR) and restorative practices (RP) implementation into a transformative mixed methods study design as a means to create equitable and caring school systems for marginalized youth. The utilization of "transformative mixed methods"…

The Teaching, Empowering, Leading and Learning (TELL) AISD Survey gathers information about school conditions from the educators working in schools. TELL obtains perceptions on a variety of issues related to student achievement and staff retention. In 2016, 5,309 AISD teachers (91%) and 3,092 other campus employees completed the survey. This is…

Increasing disparities in out-of-school suspension and dropout rates have led a number of school districts to develop alternative models of education to include alternative learning centres (ALCs). Using an exploratory mixed methods design, this study explores dimensions of social inclusion among ALCs, located in the southeastern region of the…

This report summarizes district-level results of the 2015 Teaching, Empowering, Leading, and Learning (TELL) AISD Survey. A separate one-page research brief also was published. [For the brief, see ED626501.]

By 2008, New York City's school governing regime contained two market-creation policies. Each reshaped principal incentives. One closed large high schools, replacing them with four-to-eight small schools. Another replaced uniform district-provided services with eleven School Support Organizations (SSOs). Both aimed to empower principals with new…

This paper presents inspiring stories of two school districts--Boston and Sacramento--that are changing their high schools through districtwide student engagement initiatives. These stories illustrate years of hard work, dedication and partnership by many young people, advocates, advisors, teachers, principals and district personnel. Each…

Urban school districts have increasingly enacted policies of personalism, such as converting large schools into smaller schools. Such policies ask teachers to develop supportive, individual relationships with students as a presumed lever for student achievement. Research on student-teacher relationships generally supports policies of personalism.…

After getting her master's degree from UCLA, Nancy Wills dreamed of starting a school-based guitar program so she could teach students to make music on the instrument she'd loved since she was a kid growing up outside of Yosemite, California. She had a strong belief that guitar was perfect for schools, ideal for individualized playing but also…

Recent studies make one reality clear: While multiple factors can cause a low-performing high school to be in a turnaround situation, every high school that makes dramatic academic improvement has strong, effective school leadership. Turning a school around is no work for novices. It takes a skilled, visionary and proactive principal to pull apart…

Principals can profoundly influence student achievement by leading school change, but they cannot turn schools around by themselves. District leaders need to create working conditions that support and encourage change for improved achievement, rather than hindering principals' abilities to lead change. This report includes principals' perceptions…

This research examines a community struggling to define the type of education needed for its children. After years of being a minority culture in a much larger school district, a small group of individuals in the community petitioned the state to begin a new school district. Community members indicated a desire for an emphasis on vocational skills…