Great schools need great leaders! In fact, according to recent research by Seashore Louis, Leithwood, Wahlstrom and Anderson (2010), "To date we have not found a single case of a school improving its student achievement record in the absence of talented leadership (p.9)." As such, North Carolina's Race-to-the-Top (RttT) grant earmarked…

Many public school districts struggle with the federal and state charge to increase student achievement while continuing to build the instructional capacity of classroom teachers. While this charge may not seem to be unreasonable, the widening achievement gap between various student subgroups as evidenced in standardized testing results presents…

Care Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRISs) have advanced and matured, a number of states and localities have undertaken evaluations to validate the systems. Such efforts stem from the desire to ensure that the system is designed and operating in the ways envisioned when the system was established. Given that a central component in a QRIS…

Truancy issues are longstanding and the desires to develop programs that are effective have been just as enduring. More striking is the lack of evidence of a truancy program evaluation process that includes collaboration with the clients that it serves. Truancy intervention programs have a wide range of effects on participants from multiple ethnic…

Representatives of five Race to the Top grantees--Delaware, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Rhode Island--gathered in Providence, Rhode Island on December 12, 2012 under the auspices of the Quality Evaluation Rollout (QER) Working Group to plan strategies for improving communication between teachers and State education agencies (SEAs) on…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of a newly developed instrument intended to measure faculty competence as it pertains to their role as advisors, particularly in medical and professional programs. A total of 166 students completed the Faculty Advisor's Skills and Behaviors Inventory (FASBI). The psychometric…

Recruit, train, reward, retain. These actions sound like the core competencies of a human resources manager or the buzzwords for economic development initiatives aiming to attract Fortune 500 companies. The same principles apply to finding, preparing and retaining effective educators. All 16 Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) states have…

Traditional approaches to disseminating research based programs and innovations for children and families, which rely on practitioners and policy makers to make sense of research on their own, have been found insufficient. There is growing interest in strategies that "make it happen" by actively building the capacity of service providers…

This dissertation was designed to examine and assess the impact of a Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports (PBIS) program on student behaviors, academic environment, and the total school environment. The study examined and assessed the impact of PBIS on student suspensions, student attendance, and student interactions. Additionally, this…

The Race to the Top - Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC) program, authorized by Congress in 2011, is designed to improve the quality of early learning and development programs for children from birth through age 5. This discretionary grant program is administered jointly by the U.S. Departments of Education (ED) and Health and Human Services…

This brief provides district and other educational leaders with research-based information on aligning professional development policies with teacher evaluations to drive more comprehensive human capital management. First, this brief describes an aligned evaluation and professional development system. Next, it discusses existing models and…

Because data access may be perceived by principals as overwhelming or irrelevant rather than helpful (Wayman, Spikes, & Volonnino, 2013), data access does not guarantee effective data use. The data-based decision making literature has largely focused on teacher use of data, considering less often data-based organizational improvements for the…

Many of UNC's E-Learning efforts are new and an evaluation of their effects is premature. Despite this, evaluating learning outcomes in online education may provide insight for future decisions. In order to evaluate these courses, UNC General Administration's Policy & Funding Analysis Division used a statistical technique that allows one to…

This article describes the evolution of the Charlotte Action Research Project (CHARP), a community-university partnership founded in 2008 at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and focuses particularly on the program's unique organizational structure. Research findings of a project evaluation suggest that the CHARP model's unique…

Background: Uptake of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine remains low among adolescents in the United States. We sought to assess barriers to HPV vaccine provision in school health centers to inform subsequent interventions. Methods: We conducted structured interviews in the fall of 2010 with staff from all 33 school health centers in North…