New Leaders is a nonprofit organization with a mission to ensure high academic achievement for all students by developing outstanding school leaders to serve in urban schools. Its premise is that a combination of preparation and improved working conditions for principals, especially greater autonomy, would lead to improved student outcomes. Its…

New Leaders is dedicated to promoting student achievement by developing outstanding school leaders to serve in urban schools. RAND Corporation researchers conducted a formative and summative external evaluation of the New Leaders program, its theory of action, and its implementation from 2006 through 2013. This document presents technical…

In White Kids, Mary Bucholtz investigates how white teenagers use language to display identities based on race and youth culture. Focusing on three youth styles--preppies, hip hop fans, and nerds--Bucholtz shows how white youth use a wealth of linguistic resources, from social labels to slang, from Valley Girl speech to African American English,…

Instructional quality is one of the most important factors in effective teaching. Without it, school reform is impossible. How can leaders develop and implement strategies to improve faculty quality and then manage the process of school reform in today's complex school environments? The authors answer this question through the study of a systemic…

Many urban school district students are dropping out and few of the remaining ones reach state or district achievement goals. These problems make governing urban schools both difficult and important. In 2005-06, the governance structure of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) was examined, debated, criticized, and praised by several…

This study assessed the effects of a change in principals (management succession) on school level basic skills achievement using longitudinal data on 149 San Francisco Bay Area Schools. The findings indicate that changes can affect school achievement, but that leadership effects develop slowly and are conditioned by a schools' socioeconomic…

This minimal intervention experiment was carried out in the fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade classrooms of 32 volunteer teachers. Six training packets were mailed to teachers and minimal before and after training classroom observations were conducted. Analysis showed no significant changes in teaching practices or student achievement. (BS)

This analysis is the seventh of a series of seven reports on the ways that the urban fiscal crisis has affected children. The fiscal containment imposed on California schools after the enactment of Proposition 13 in 1978 has resulted in changes in urban high school curricula over the past five years. A telephone survey of school personnel and…

A study was done of novice teachers in California's public education system to examine how well they function in the language diverse metropolitan classrooms. Fall and Spring surveys were administered to 1,368 new teachers, and Spring surveys were administered to the directors of induction projects in which the new teachers participated. Findings…

A growing number of American students are nonnative English speakers. These students are vulnerable to early school exit and schools are facing more and more such students each year. Presently, about 56% of all public school teachers in the United States have at least one English language learner (ELL) student in their class, but less than 20% of…