This descriptive report is part of a broader project collecting, organizing, and analyzing multiple sources of data from the four-state REL Appalachia region, comprised of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. The purposes of that broader project are: (1) to increase awareness of and understanding about critical education issues in the…

The objective of this paper is to explore the operation of magnet and professional development school (PDS) programs in a real life situation using an ethnographic study of Downtown Elementary School (DES--a pseudonym) that simultaneously operates as a PDS and a magnet school. The author spent almost three years at DES, located in the Southern…

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has invested in the development and dissemination of instructional tools to support teachers' incorporation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) into their classroom instruction. Math experts have developed formative assessment lessons (FALs) that teachers can incorporate throughout the year's curriculum.…

In consideration of the widening achievement gap between native English speaking and non-English speaking students, the purpose of this study was to determine whether a predictable relationship exists between the academic achievement of English language learners (ELLs) and their background variables. Specifically, this study examined differences…

The study reported in this article investigated the differential effects of teachers on female, minority, and low-socioeconomic-status (SES) students' achievement. I used data from a 4-year, large-scale, randomized experiment (Project STAR) that was conducted between 1985 and 1989 in Tennessee, in which students and teachers were randomly assigned…

New Leaders for New Schools, a non-profit organization committed to training high-quality urban public school principals, received grants from the U.S. Department of Education in 2006 and 2007 to support the development of innovative teacher compensation strategies. New Leaders is partnering with four urban school districts and a consortium of…

America's urban Catholic schools are in crisis. This report finds that over 1,300 schools have shut down since 1990, mostly in our cities. As a result, some 300,000 students have been displaced--forced to attend other public, private, or parochial schools. The school closures have cost taxpayers more than $20 billion to accommodate the additional…

Schools and districts rarely have a fair distribution of teacher talent. Poor children and black children are less likely to be taught by the strongest teachers and more likely to be taught by the weakest. Several districts have implemented programs to reduce the teacher quality gap. Hamilton County, Tennessee, launched an initiative that included…

This paper discusses research, (its process and results), on an inner city school. It highlights the methods of data collection used in the research and discusses the findings. Methods of data collection include observation, interview and documentary information. Results indicate that the school in question is making modest strides, in terms of…

Pediatric asthma rates are reaching epidemic proportions, adversely affecting children's quality of life, educational potential, and health care costs, especially those in the inner city. This study evaluated the effectiveness of a school-based asthma case management (CM) approach with medically undeserved inner-city children attending Memphis…

Examines issues under three categories: strategies and plans for desegregation in rural school districts and small towns; the complexity of policy making in Memphis, Chattanooga, and Nashville school districts; and the record of federal courts in Tennessee. (RH)

In a survey of 46 Memphis-area high-school teachers, 72 percent of respondents reported having disabled students in their classes, but most felt inadequately prepared to teach them. About 85 percent thought that including severely disabled kids in neighborhood schools would necessitate substantial teacher retraining. (Contains 12 references.) (MLH)

This document provides educational researchers with the locale type for every public school in Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, and Tennessee as of 1995-96. The classification system used to assign locale types was developed by Frank H. Johnson and had been adopted by the National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data, Public…

The major purpose of this study was to identify which of 16 socioeconomic variables discriminated most effectively between districts with declining enrollments and districts with rising enrollments among public elementary and secondary schools in Tennessee. (Author/IRT)