Students in poverty need both academic and social supports. Former New York City Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew and scholar Pedro Noguera argue that students in poverty need both intensive academic and social supports. They maintain that U.S. education policy, with its focus on academic accountability, has generally failed to grasp this dual…

The purpose of this phenomenological study is to gain an understanding of what school innovation looks like as well as how school and district leaders address the concept. Technology has forever changed society. We must be careful not to confuse school innovation as the implementation of technology in the classroom. Educational leaders face the…

Although U.S. schools that provide bilingual education typically must negotiate English-only policies and pressures to sustain their programming over time, little is known about what this entails at the individual school level. Our research examines in detail how the leaders of an elementary school in New York City with a Spanish-English…

This hearing of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions examines No Child Left Behind, focusing on testing and accountability. At the center of the debate about how to fix No Child Left Behind is what to do about the Federal requirement that states, each year, administer 17 standardized tests with high stakes consequences.…

There is a faltering sense of democracy in America's current political climate due to polarized opinions about leadership's decisions and antagonistic political parties. John Dewey (1916) proposed that education is the place to foster democracy, as schools can provide a platform to actively engage students in authentic democratic experiences that…

This dissertation explores how federal education policies affect outcomes for special populations and their teachers. The first study uses a differences-in-differences design and data from the Stanford Education Data Archive to determine if "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) waivers reduced district-level white-black and white-Hispanic…

The purpose of this brief is to support stakeholders in their efforts to influence how states use the mandatory 7 percent Title I school improvement set-aside in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)--an allocation that could total more than $5 billion nationwide over the next five years. First, the authors provide an overview of the ESSA's school…

School performance frameworks (SPFs) are action-oriented information tools that provide information on school performance and quality across a variety of measures. SPFs have evolved as a solution for local communities to make sense of an array of student, school, and system performance data, and to support transparent and equitable decisions. SPFs…

A quality education that promotes learning among all students is a prerequisite for an economy that increases opportunity, prosperity, and growth. School accountability policies, in which school performance is evaluated based on identified metrics, have developed over the past few decades as a strategy central to assessing and achieving progress…

This review examines four books that may offer some insight into what the discussion about educational policy, reform, and performance may look like after the era of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Collectively, "The Allure of Order: High Hopes, Dashed Expectations, and the Troubled Quest to Remake American Schooling" by Jal Mehta,…

The challenges facing our children in the 21st century are rapidly changing. As a result, schools bear a greater responsibility to prepare students for college, career, and life and must be held accountable for more than just testing and reporting on a narrow set of outcomes aimed at minimum levels of competency. Thus, scholars, educators, and…

Paraeducators perform multiple roles in U.S. classrooms, including among others preparing classroom activities, working with students individually and in small groups, supporting individualized programming for students with disabilities, managing classroom behavior, and engaging with parents and communities. Yet, little research provides insights…

This descriptive study used nonparametric (Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney U) tests to determine the efficacy of New York City (NYC) small school initiative. A sample of 369 NYC high schools was tested on various performance indicators. The results: Large schools generated statistically significant higher performance scores and were more effective…

Exploring the critical role of school choice in the future of education reform, the Education Choice and Competition Index (ECCI) is an interactive web application that scores large school districts based on thirteen categories of policy and practice relevant to choice. The intent of the ECCI is to: create public awareness of the differences among…

This report discusses findings from 2003 surveys conducted by Advocates for Children of New York (AFC), which assessed the implementation and effectiveness of the Supplemental Education Services program (SES) required under the No Child Left Behind Act. SES services, which began in 2002-2003, offered over 240,000 eligible children in schools…