Flexibility is a lever for change that occupies an increasingly prominent place in federal strategies for educational improvement. Flexibility assumes that local actors are in the best position to identify the most serious problems facing schools and students and to determine how to solve them. Consequently, these actors should be given greater…

The statewide implementation of instructional support teams (ISTs) in Pennsylvania is analyzed in terms of the challenge of bringing team-based problem-solving models to scale. The history of the phase-in of ISTs in more than 1,700 elementary schools is presented, and the salient research conducted on ISTs is reviewed. The results indicate that…

Effective exploration of spatially referenced educational achievement data can help educational researchers and policy analysts accelerate interpretation of datasets to gain valuable insights. This paper illustrates the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to analyze educational achievement gaps in Arkansas. It introduces the Geographic…

Critics of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) suggest that the effects of state-mandated testing are primarily negative, causing teachers to narrow the curriculum and drill students on tested material. However, the implementation of assessment programs that provide rapid diagnostic information about student progress may allow teachers to prepare…

This report begins to address the need for research about the structures, policies, and supports that leaders are implementing to address the needs of low-performing schools. It documents findings from a descriptive research study of four states and one large urban district in the Northeast during the formation and early implementation of new…

In a coherent educational assessment system, the relation between the cut scores across the grades of a content area should reflect the goals of the educational system moderated by the state of the standards within that system. In this article, we discuss the need for consistent cut scores across the grades of a content area; we present and…

For several years now, an achievement gap has been in existence between African American students and white students in mathematics. The purpose of this study is to (1) report on an in-depth case study of a former state mathematics consultant to describe his experiences of the mathematics education of African Americans in public high schools in…

In the winter and spring of 2007-08, the Center on Education Policy (CEP) expanded its ongoing research on the impact of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) by conducting case studies of six schools in Rhode Island to learn more about the influence of NCLB and related state accountability policies on curriculum, instruction, and student…

Under the No Child Left Behind Act (2002), all schools are required to demonstrate that all students make annual yearly progress (AYP). This can be difficult, particularly for students in urban schools and even more so for students with disabilities. The authors report on one large urban school district's attempts to provide support to 140 schools…

The purpose of this paper is to present select findings from a case study of a single suburban middle school. The purpose of the investigation was to explore and describe teachers' and students' perceptions of the caring leadership practices that seventh grade teachers used in their classrooms and the differences between those perceptions. The…

A language-levels model was used to analyze written narratives. The results have implications for instruction and for documenting change in the story-writing performance of students with and without special needs in the area of written language development. This study was based on stories written at midyear by 277 students (224 typical learners…

This study had two broad goals: to discuss state politics and accountability policies in Virginia and Georgia before the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act and to analyze the civil rights implications of NCLB's accountability requirements for future policy decisions. Part 1 describes previous policies and governance arrangements and how these factors…

For years, experts have said that the way to get things done is to schedule them on the calendar and to find a partner to join in the effort. Following this advice, the Association of California School Administrators (ACSA) joined the Leadership Initiative at WestEd in inviting superintendents and district teams to think through improving…

A cacophony of voices is continuing to place mandates on education and yet the voices of teachers are seldom heard. Teacher education can attempt to address this issue by facilitation of advocacy experiences via service-learning. The experiential and transformative nature of service-learning is illustrated through three case studies in which…

The Transition to Teaching (TTT) program is described in Part C, Innovations for Teacher Quality, Subpart 1, Chapter B of the "No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act." Its purposes are "(a) to recruit and retain highly qualified mid-career professionals (including highly qualified paraprofessionals) and recent graduates of an institution…