School improvement in chronically under-performing schools remains a formidable challenge for school leaders. Recent policies in the U.S. have created incentives for school leaders to attempt new strategies to improve outcomes, and increasingly, school leaders of charter management organizations and other multi-school organizations (MSOs) are…

The federal Race to the Top initiative signified a shift in American education policy whereby accountability efforts moved from the school to the teacher level. Using administrative data from Tennessee, we explore whether evaluation reforms differentially influenced mobility patterns for teachers of varying effectiveness. We find that the rollout…

With more rigorous standards and testing at the forefront of educational reform across the nation, the rural school district in this study developed a strategic compensation plan with bonus pay based on student test scores as a teacher success incentive. A causal-comparative study was conducted to examine the effect of teacher merit pay levels on…

The purpose of this study was to examine the factors that impact teachers' decisions to remain teaching in an urban school district. The researcher analyzed survey data provided by the Office of Planning and Accountability for an urban school district in Tennessee. The findings of the study are also discussed as well as any implication for…

All individuals go through a process of change when implementing a new innovation. This descriptive study determines there is a difference in the stages of concern regarding Response to Instruction and Intervention (RTI), Tennessee's design model for Response to Intervention, (RTI) for 87 teachers from 8 different schools in a county in Middle…

Every student, no matter where he or she lives, deserves a great teacher. States, educator preparation programs (EPPs), and K-12 leaders must work together to ensure that all teachers are learner ready on day one in the classroom. But too often, these actors do not have access to the necessary information to fully prepare teachers for the unique…

All individuals go through a process of change when implementing a new innovation. This descriptive study determines there is a difference in the stages of concern regarding Response to Instruction and Intervention (RTI 2), Tennessee's design model for Response to Intervention, (RTI) for 87 teachers from 8 different schools in a county in Middle…

Michigan's public education system remains in a perennial rut, as it has for decades. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), Michigan's fourth grade reading scores show no significant change over the past 16 years. Even before the pandemic, too many dreams have stalled, and academic achievement remains largely…

This article seeks to characterize Teach For America's (TFA) theoretical framework as engendering disillusionment among its corps members. Given that the corps members have little to no pedagogical or methods training prior to taking on teaching positions through TFA, the lessons learned during the summer training set the stage for the…

The well known 1983 report "A Nation at Risk" recommended that individuals preparing to teach should meet high education standards and demonstrate an aptitude for teaching and competence in an academic discipline--adding also that college and university teacher preparation programs should be judged by how well their graduates meet these…

The portfolio strategy is a change strategy for public education in a district or metropolitan area. It is founded on the idea of re-missioning government agencies from rigid bureaucratic entities that mostly manage compliance requirements and interest group politics to a new role: overseeing performance and a diverse range of school choices…

The Every Students Succeeds Act (ESSA) provided states with newfound flexibility on accountability measures and school improvement strategies. Many policy experts have analyzed states' ESSA plans, which explain how states use their federal funds under various provisions of the new law, as well as the approaches states take to identify and rate…

States, programs, and schools have long focused on the inputs of teacher preparation--the rules for candidates and the preparation programs they attend--because inputs were thought to predict teacher effectiveness, and because they were often the best option available. But in the early 2000s, policymakers began trying to evaluate preparation…

Policy makers at the federal level have embraced an educator effectiveness agenda, which in turn has driven many states across the country to rapidly develop and implement new and more complex teacher evaluation systems. It is increasingly clear that the success of these nascent teacher evaluation systems partly depends on the will, skill, and…

NIET [National Institute for Excellence in Teaching] continually evaluates the impact of TAP: The System for Teacher and Student Advancement on raising student achievement, improving instruction and increasing the ability of high-need schools to recruit, retain and support effective teachers. In addition to national results in student achievement…