School leaders, specifically principals, play a pivotal role in shaping student learning outcomes. The benefits of strong leaders extend beyond academic achievement, such as reductions in absenteeism and exclusionary discipline. While quality principals are critical for creating and sustaining quality schools, the staffing pipeline is facing…

Preparing to become a music teacher educator is a complex process and one component of this process should be learning to model, demonstrate, and teach assessment practices to preservice music educators. The purpose of this exploratory qualitative study was to discover how, and to what extent, music teacher educators (MTEs) are educated about…

This paper describes and compares the profiles of the top accounting programs in the United States as identified by "U.S. News and World Report" in 2004 with the profiles of the top accounting programs in the United States as identified by the "Accounting Degree Review" in 2014. The "Accounting Degree Review"'s list…

Just a few years ago, tenure appeared low on the reform list for state policy makers and district administrators, viewed as too hot an issue politically to challenge. But it was front and center in the 2014 landmark "Vergara v. California" lawsuit, which challenged teacher tenure and related policies. Yet whether to grant tenure or not…

Salaries are one of the most powerful policy levers states and school districts can use to attract qualified, effective, and diverse teachers. What role do states play in supporting strategic use of salaries? This report examines the state teacher compensation policies that influence districts' potential strategic use of teacher pay. It analyzes…

Public debate surrounds the success of charter schools in serving students and providing a generative environment for teacher innovation. Through semi-structured interviews with eleven (N = 11) K-12 charter school music teachers, this study aims to contribute to the understanding of charter school music teachers' perceptions of their setting in…

An innovative system-building initiative known as the STEM Learning Ecosystems Community of Practice (SLECoP) is transforming U.S. STEM education through cross-sector partnerships between schools, afterschool and summer programs, libraries, museums, and businesses, among others. Although logic models exist to describe how SLEs can make positive…

Teacher evaluation systems introduced by states and school systems in the past several years have focused attention on improving the performance of public school teachers, but they have been cost- and time-intensive, placing a significant burden on states' and districts' resources. In Tennessee, for example, trained evaluators conducted nearly…

This first analysis of aggregated data from the Kahoot! game-based player response system demonstrates that it can provide assessments of overall US student polar knowledge and identifies differences in polar knowledge across several states. A kahoot online quiz on polar topics recorded over 25,000 United States teacher-hosted classroom players…

The purpose of this project was to determine the effectiveness of the Helping Administer to the Needs of the Student with Diabetes in Schools (H.A.N.D.S.?) continuing education program in improving the level of experience and competence in performing services associated with diabetes care. This program is a live course for school nurses providing…

The goal of this report is to inform schools, families and communities about the potential of personalized learning and empower them with ways to support the shift to student-centered learning. The authors define personalized learning and describe why it matters. They highlight examples of personalized learning in action to show how personalized…

The responsibility for college success has historically rested with the student, but since the 1980s, educators have taken increasing ownership of this, designing structures that increase the likelihood of learning, success, and retention. These efforts have included a variety of initiatives--first year seminars, learning communities,…

This NEPC Policy Memo presents the text of a letter from Drs. Burris and Welner to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. The letter was invited by Secretary Duncan during a phone conversation with Dr. Burris. It offers concrete guiding principles for evaluation of educators and suggestions for a way forward. (Contains 11 notes.)

Objective: Quantway is a Carnegie Math Pathways initiative, which redesigns the content, pedagogy, and structure of traditional developmental mathematics courses to simultaneously tackle traditional barriers to student success and support a broad range of developmental students in achieving their mathematics potential. Specifically, Quantway is a…

Each year, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) publishes the "State Teacher Policy Yearbook," a comprehensive examination of the state laws, rules and regulations that govern the teaching profession, measured against a realistic set of reform goals. For five years running, the full "Yearbook" compendium…