Purpose: Our purpose was to gather and evaluate accurate, up-to-date information on physical education (PE) policy implementation across multiple U.S. states and regions. Methods: A U.S. Physical Education and Physical Activity Policy questionnaire was developed and completed by 4,845 public-school PE teachers from 25 U.S. states. The U.S.…

Purpose/Objectives: This study investigated the use of electronic and paper-based point-of-service (POS) systems in school nutrition programs (SNPs), including associated challenges and the desired skills and existing training practices for personnel handling such systems. Methods: A questionnaire was developed based on interviews with 25 SNP…

The purpose of this quantitative non-experimental correlational study was to investigate how professional development, specifically the PIL professional development initiative, influenced principals' and assistant principals' self-perceived leadership behaviors. A purposive sampling of public school principals and assistant principals located in…

This study was designed to identify factors that might influence Pennsylvania public school superintendents in the decision regarding the potential use of single-subject acceleration as a practice for meeting the needs of students in the elementary setting. The research targeted public school superintendents in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. In…

The Pennsylvania Department of Education's (PDE's) Office for Safe Schools partnered with REL Mid-Atlantic to conduct a study using data from PDE's school climate survey. This survey, which is available on a voluntary basis to any school in the state, provides a way to track school climate and identify schools that need additional support to…

These are the appendixes for the full report, "Changes in School Climate during COVID-19 in a Sample of Pennsylvania Schools." The REL study analyzed changes in scores from a pre-pandemic year (2018/19) to the 2020/21 and 2021/22 school years, both of which were affected by COVID-19 and related policy changes. These technical appendixes…

Public school districts are locally controlled and funded through local property taxes. Funding schools this way perpetuates structural inequities in poorer school districts and as a result, students living in poverty have minimal access to critical resources that support student learning. Community schools are resurfacing in many of these urban…

This mixed method study was a practitioner inquiry into the teacher evaluation system that was enacted as a result of Pennsylvania House Bill 1901 (Act 82 of 2012). The study was an effort to gain an in-depth understanding of (a) factors that led to the passage of the Act 82 teacher evaluation policy, (b) what the policy was intended to do, and…

Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) are being used as a form of teacher professional development in schools across the world. The concept has been present in the educational literature for over thirty years. While many educators are familiar with the term, some schools have not yet implemented PLCs. Hord (1997) determined that all true PLCs…

Background: School-based recommendations for nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) were issued in response to the threat of 2009 pandemic influenza A (pH1N1). The implementation and effectiveness of these recommendations has not been assessed. Methods: In November 2009, a Web-based survey of all Pennsylvania public schools was conducted to assess…

The purpose of a physical restraint is to control the behavior of a student. It can involve physically holding a person immobile against his or her will to using chemical or mechanical devices to control a person. This study was designed to contribute to the paucity of existing research literature in regards to a school administrator's impact on…

School leadership has always been a moral undertaking. Contemporary school leaders face complex ethical dilemmas every day. A limited amount of research exists to describe the extent to which school principals feel formally prepared to be ethical leaders. The purpose of this study was to identify the relationship between the self-identified…

The Pennsylvania Principal's Induction Program, referred to in this study as GROW, includes mentoring as a component offered to enhance and support the professional growth of first to third year administrator-inductees with regard to the core and corollary standards for leadership. Among the many administrators involved in the program,…

This report describes the implementation of professional development (PD) reforms and efforts to use teacher effectiveness (TE) data to inform PD through the third year of the initiative for all seven sites: Hillsborough County Public Schools (HCPS), Shelby County Schools (SCS, formerly Memphis City Schools), Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS), and…

What software tools do school systems actually want? Demand-side analyses typically reflect the loudest voices in the market that companies are eager to please--in the case of education technology, the largest urban districts with the largest technology budgets. But half of the nation's 48 million public school students attend approximately 3,700…