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.…

In the U.S., state guidance to schools in response to the COVID-19 pandemic was politicized. We used state-level political affiliation to explore whether access to curricular resources differed pre-pandemic or during pandemic remote teaching and teachers' reported control over curricular resources during pandemic teaching. We found that…

In 2019, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) began exploratory data collection for the School Pension Survey (SPS). The SPS is a new data collection of elementary/secondary school teacher pension data collected at the school district level. The SPS was developed primarily in response to public demand for data on teacher and other…

The purpose of this article is to promote a deeper, more complex understanding of the challenge that "recess time" poses to elementary school educators and to thereby understand the practices in which they are currently engaging. Because teachers are expected to shepherd students through a vast array of learning standards while remaining…

This paper presents the results of a nationwide survey of educators for grades 6-12 who specialize in family and consumer sciences education (N=380). The paper examines teacher reports about their self-efficacy in online learning during the switch to off-campus instruction. Data revealed that district communication to teachers indicating that they…

Little is known about stress perception and perceived coping mechanisms used by special educators. This article presents a study with 211 special educators to determine how they deal with stress. Participants completed a survey reporting stressors and coping skills. Special educators reported stress in their positions. Increased caseloads,…

All but four states in the nation now permit teachers to come into the profession through an "alternate route," compared to only a few 30 years ago. Alternate routes into the classroom have grown so acceptable that about one in five teachers now enters the profession through one of these programs, which offer some real benefits to the…

Preliminary findings indicate that positive relations between parents and teachers are associated with successful school outcomes for children. However, measures available to assess parent-teacher relations are scant. The current study examined validity evidence for the Parent-Teacher Relationship Scale-I (PTRS). Specifically, the internal…

Using state-representative surveys of teachers and 94 interviews with state leaders and educators from 2016 to 2019, the authors examine perceptions of the policy environments for instructional content standards in Texas and Ohio and their association with teachers' practice. They find that Texas teacher perceive their policy environments for…

The purpose of this efficacy study was to examine the impact of the Teacher Study Group (TSG) professional development program in vocabulary, on teacher knowledge, observed teaching practice, and student vocabulary achievement, when implemented with first grade teachers in Title 1 schools. This multi-site cluster randomized trial was implemented…

The purpose of this replication study was to examine the impact of the Teacher Study Group (TSG) professional development in vocabulary on first-grade teachers' knowledge of vocabulary instruction and observed teaching practice, and on students' vocabulary knowledge. Sixty-two schools from 16 districts in four states were randomly assigned to…

This study looks deeply inside 17 schools that stand at the vanguard of the current revolution in teaching. This new National Center on Time & Learning (NCTL) report reveals the substantive ways in which these schools are providing their teachers with more time to reflect on, develop, and hone their craft, by very explicitly leveraging an…

The ESEA Blueprint for Reform states that teachers need "effective, ongoing, job-embedded, professional development that is targeted to student and school needs… [and] aligned with evidence of improvements in student learning." Unfortunately, the professional development approaches advocated, though sensible and compelling in theory,…

This publication is the result of an 18-month project that brought together teams from six states--Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas--along with their national organizations in a groundbreaking partnership to identify collective bargaining language and policies that support high-quality professional development.…