This qualitative case study explored how educators in a high-poverty, urban public high school used student achievement data to inform instruction. The sample consisted of one principal, five counselors, and ten teachers across multiple departments in a Los Angeles County high school recognized for its data-driven practices and collaborative…

This guide aims to present district instructional leaders and staff with a core set of criteria for what high-quality professional development entails. What makes this particular document different and useful is the focus on practical issues of district-level implementation in multiple teaching and learning environments. This is a guide designed…

This qualitative study reports on principals' perceptions regarding the teacher characteristics deemed most important for hiring effective teachers. Data for the study come from semi-structured interviews with principals working in urban public, Catholic, and Jewish schools. Results reveal a tendency among principals in all three sectors to focus…

This qualitative phenomenological study explored how 19 school leaders in seven California comprehensive high schools were making sense of data and using data to transform their schools by closing achievement gap for historically underrepresented students. Data is a powerful tool in the hands of school leaders to transform patterns of inequality…

Urban community leaders describe their perceptions of critical issues in education and offer recommendations for the creation of a college-going culture (CGC). This qualitative study employed a maximum entropy analysis. Results demonstrate critical issues with increasing educational attainment including complexity of the urban school system,…

The Leaders' Evaluation and Analysis Development (LEAD) Tool provides the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) with a data set to measure the level of teacher effectiveness at every school site. The LEAD Tool data variables also provide teacher, principal, and schools with data that may have a relationship with a school's overall academic…

School districts increasingly push school leaders to utilize multiple measures of teacher effectiveness, such as observation ratings or value-added scores, in making talent management decisions, including teacher hiring, assignment, support, and retention, but we know little about the local conditions that promote or impede these processes. We…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the existing influences faced by today's urban inner-city elementary school principals that impact the successful implementation of reform strategies as measured by student achievement data. The study examines dynamics such as the characteristics and qualities, leadership style and behavior,…

Focuses on the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) (California) experiences for understanding how the arts must compete for resources. Explores how a cluster of schools in Los Angeles tried to implement visual arts programs addressing the Getty-Fairfax Project (a K-12 arts education project) in detail. (CMK)