U.S. federal policies No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top resulted in a policy overlap that created unique challenges and opportunities for administrators. This study examined principals' perceptions of an overlapping accountability-innovation policy context and their sense of how the policies affected their role as leaders. Primary data for…

Through policies like No Child Left Behind, the federal government incentivized the use of student performance data as a core strategy for improving student achievement. The assumption behind these efforts is that data will be used to guide teacher practice and promote high-quality instruction. This study examined how teachers describe using data…

Florida's Race to the Top (RTTT) competition invited university-district partnerships to compete for funds aimed at improving principal preparation programs. In this article, we report findings from a qualitative case study focused on one program partnership funded by RTTT. Drawing upon interviews with faculty and relevant documents, we conducted…

There has been a sea change in teacher evaluation over the past eight years. Inspired in part by President Barack Obama's policies, schools have instituted teacher evaluation systems that include multiple measures of teacher impact. Model systems are aligned to systems of continuous improvement, helping teachers identify areas of weakness in their…

In 2011, President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan provided states with an opportunity for flexibility from certain requirements under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or ESEA, currently known as the No Child Left Behind, or NCLB, Act. A total of 43 states; Washington, D.C.; Puerto Rico; and eight districts in…

This article summarizes the research base on teacher effectiveness in physical education from a historical perspective and explores the implications of the recent emphasis on student performance and teacher observation systems to evaluate teachers for physical education. The problems and the potential positive effects of using student performance…

The call for school psychologists to demonstrate accountability in the evaluation of services at the individual, group, and system levels comes at a time when school districts nationally are pursuing personnel evaluation models that link teachers' instructional practices to student achievement. School psychologists have an opportunity to take a…

Since "A Nation At Risk" (1954), a series of laws and key reform initiatives were passed to hold schools accountable for improving the quality of public education (e.g. "IASA," "Title 1," "NCLB," "RTTT"). These reform initiatives require that public schools undergo continuous change but simply…

School districts within the USA face ever-decreasing autonomy in rendering decisions regarding instruction, curriculum and the leading and managing of schools at the local level due to the ever-increasing accountability measures implemented by district, state and federal governments. This study investigates a joint university-school district…

Over the past decade, school districts and states have made impressive advances in collecting and managing data used for accountability purposes. By the year 2011, all 50 states will have systems to track students from year to year. But in most states and districts, all the data generated by these systems flows only one way: up. This paper…

State educational accountability models are in transition. Whether modifying the present accountability system to comply with existing state and federal requirements or anticipating new ones--such as the U.S. Department of Education's (ED) Race to the Top competition--recording the experiences of state education agencies (SEAs) that are currently…