A key assumption of accountability policies is that educators will use data to improve their instruction. In practice, however, data use is quite hard, and more districts are looking to instructional coaches to support their teachers. The purpose of this descriptive analysis is to examine how instructional coaches in elementary and middle school…

The purpose of case study was to examine the beliefs and practices of a successful teacher in a high poverty middle school. Specifically, the study examined the role of teacher beliefs and how these beliefs were enacted in a middle school classroom. This article, part of a larger study, focuses on 1 teacher in order to more thoroughly probe and…

This study explores teachers' first enactments of a set of theory-based curriculum materials designed to support academic language instruction. Specifically, this multiple case study looks at how six middle school English teachers in three US schools adapted the materials; each case includes a pair of teachers, one novice and one more experienced.…

Purpose: When school leaders advance strategic plans focused on improving educational equity through data-driven decision making, how do policies-as-practiced unfold in the daily work of science teachers? The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach: This ethnographic study examines how data-centric accountability and…

Purpose: Principals face shifting accountability pressures from many sources. The most notable recent change in the USA has been the growing pressure from state and federal government. The purpose of this study is to explore the extent to which the accountability pressures experienced by principals in one American state were the same as those…

Despite a growing body of research on data use in education, there has been relatively little focus on the role of students. This article begins to fill this gap by exploring teacher and administrator reports on engaging students in data use at six middle schools. Even though teachers expressed a belief that involving students in data use would…

Professional learning communities (PLCs) have become a popular strategy in various forms (e.g., data teams, grade-level teams) and with various champions (e.g., district leaders, university researchers, teacher advocates). Although well-implemented PLCs have been shown to distribute leadership, the tension between democratic inquiry processes and…

The aim of this study was to ascertain which dimensions of parents' experiences with schools are most strongly associated with parents' perceptions that schools are or are not facilitating parent involvement as mandated by the federal accountability system under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Participants were 92 parents…

The focus in this paper is on a student voice initiative at an English secondary school designed to improve the quality of teaching and learning. The initiative invites Year 8 students to train and work as "lesson observers" who provide feedback to teachers about their practice. The possibilities of this initiative to reflect a rich and…

This case study draws on Gee's (1989) "D/discourse theory" to investigate English learners' (ELs') perspectives regarding Accountable Talk (AT)--a structured, discourse-intensive instructional approach--after a yearlong implementation in three content-based (mathematics) middle school classrooms. Interviews with 21 ELs (3 Advanced…

Drawing on theoretical and empirical research concerning the relationship between academic work and student learning, this article explores the following questions: What skills are required to execute the academic tasks teachers assign on a daily basis? How do teachers and administrators interpret the task demands represented in instructional…

Art teachers have, in some manner, always assessed student learning and progress. However, many art teachers do not have the training in assessment to be able to describe and defend their process, nor has there been research to support the effectiveness of how art teachers assess student learning. This study examines the ways six visual art…

Many Canadian provinces provide guidelines for teachers to determine students' final grades by combining a percentage of students' scores from provincial large-scale assessments with their term scores. This practice is thought to hold students accountable by motivating them to put effort into completing the large-scale assessment, thereby…

Researchers from MDRC and Johns Hopkins University partnered with Florida's Broward County Public Schools (BCPS) in 2009 to launch an independent evaluation of the district's initiative to implement Ninth Grade Academies (NGAs) in every district high school. An NGA is a self-contained learning community for ninth-graders that operates as a school…

Accountability demands on schools are increasingly difficult to meet at the local, state, and national levels. This study examined the perspectives of curriculum team leaders (CTLs) that are one middle school's response to increased accountability and changing student population. The CTLs provide instructional supervision to same-grade,…