Active teaching methods are believed to facilitate higher-order thinking skills and prepare allied health students for independent clinical decision-making. This quantitative, correlational study aimed to explain the relationships between student preferences for active over traditional methods and their beliefs, the frequency and positiveness of…

In partnership with the National Charter School Resource Center (NCSRC), the National Association for Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) has been conducting authorizer assessments over the past six years. However, the correlation between high-quality authorization practices and charter school impact has largely been unexplored. This report uses a…

The purpose of this exploratory study was to analyze how high school principals approached developing a collaborative culture and providing collaborative leadership in a large high school setting. The population sample for this study was 82 principals of large comprehensive high schools of grades 9 through 12 or some combination thereof with…

The certainty of facing death and bereavement and the complex personal and societal issues involved argue for the importance of death education. The current study addresses a gap in knowledge by beginning to assess the extent of dying, death, and bereavement (DD&B) course offerings by U.S. psychology departments. This article reports on data…

What happens when teams from 57 cities building afterschool systems gather to discuss two key system responsibilities--improving afterschool programs and using data for informed decision-making? Lots of rich discussion. This report covers a national afterschool conference held in February 2013. It details what mayors, program providers, system…

During the National Association of State Directors of Special Education's (NASDSE) 2005 annual meeting, a panel of youth representatives challenged states to do a better job of including youth with disabilities in state-level decision making (e.g., as members of state advisory panels [SAPs] and/or transition councils). State directors of special…

Educational improvement through data-based decision-making using high-quality data is a longstanding goal of policymakers and practitioners, and ensuring the quality of the evidence available to inform such decisions is a key part of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The evidence-based education that such initiatives promote involves the…

Individual members of state legislatures wield the greatest influence in state level policy formation. This was one of the findings of a study that identified the power and influence context of state-level policymaking. Data were gathered from six states (Arizona, California, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Illinois) using an instrument…

Before there can be an understanding of politics, policy, and action in education, there must be an understanding of the value systems of policymakers. Policymakers, in their talk, in their choices of symbols and metaphors, in their choices of strategies for dealing with conflict, reveal their own needs, their role orientations, their group…

The literature on collective bargaining in public education typically argues whether such bargaining is good public policy or bad, sound or unsound, and so forth. No studies to date have measured the actual impact of differing kinds of collective bargaining legislation on local school boards' decisionmaking powers. This study examined whether two…

In the present complex and changing context students and families are looking for information tools to help them identify financial planning constants to allow them to reduce the number of unknown factors that can be barriers to the completion of a personal financial package to cover the cost of higher education. This handbook is designed to…

A study conducted by 19 student researchers under a grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, concluded that very little information is designed to aid students to make a choice for their future. Three separate publications resulted, called the "Options Handbooks." Material from these handbooks is synthesized…