No previous research has employed learning environments criteria in evaluating the effectiveness of the system of teacher certification sponsored by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Because the litmus test of any professional development effort is the extent of the changes in teaching behaviours in participating teachers'…

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and the Foundation for Excellence in Education have embarked on a well-funded campaign to spread selected Florida education reforms to other states. These reforms include assigning letter grades to schools, high-stakes testing, promotion and graduation requirements, bonus pay, a wide variety of alternative teacher…

In 2006-07, New York City, the largest school district in the United States, decided it would follow several other school systems in adopting a progress report program. Under its program, the city grades schools from A to F according to an accumulating point system based on the weighted average of measurements of school environment, students'…

In this paper we analyze the impact of classroom peers on individual student performance with a unique longitudinal data set covering all Florida public school students in grades 3-10 over a five-year period. Unlike many previous data sets used to study peer effects in education, our data set allow us to identify each member of a given student's…