With the demands on student learning and school accountability, school leaders and teachers must be provided with high-quality structures and conditions for effective and meaningful school improvement. This, coupled with highly effective leadership, is crucial. This qualitative study examines Illinois's current state comprehensive school…

The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenological study was to understand the perceptions and emotions of teachers during the global pandemic, specifically looking at the "how" and the "what" teachers experienced during the pandemic, focusing on the emotions deriving from the participants' lived experiences with technology. The…

There is a growing body of research that suggests the first year of high school is a critical transition point for students. It also finds course-taking and successful completion of those courses in 9th grade to be valuable predictors of students' success in high school. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) provides states an opportunity to…

When using time series accountability data to evaluate system-wide education policies, concurrent changes often pose threats to internal validity. The standard difference-in-differences (DID) method resorts to a non-equivalent comparison group whose average outcome change is due to such confounding. This strategy relies on the strong assumption…

"TAP"™: "The System for Teacher and Student Advancement (TAP™)" is an educator effectiveness program that aims to improve student achievement through supports and incentives for teachers. Based on the research, "TAP"™ teachers were found to have no discernible effects on student achievement in science, English…

This action research project report uses standard-based grading to address the problem of traditional grades not adequately assessing student content mastery and students' lack of awareness regarding their strengths and weaknesses. Research was conducted by one elementary and two middle school teachers with 158 students between the dates of…

This is an abridged, summary report of selected findings from "Pieces of the Puzzle: Factors in the Improvement of Urban School Districts on the National Assessment of Educational Progress"--a comprehensive study prepared by the Council of the Great City Schools in collaboration with the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and with…

This report summarizes preliminary and exploratory research conducted by the Council of the Great City Schools and the American Institutes for Research on urban school systems participating in the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The study is one of the first large-scale analyses…

In order to achieve middle school literacy success over time in an urban school district with a high poverty rate and a growing population of English language learners (ELLs), the Chicago Public School (CPS) System has adopted a pedagogical strategy that relies on instruction that is data-driven (formative and summative), standards-based…

In the few short years since its passage in 2002, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has become the focus of many in education, from state superintendents to researchers to teachers. In this Issues in Education we seek to give the reader a basic introduction to the way in which NCLB and its main measure of success, Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP),…