Online learning in the elementary school grades is popular in the United States. A recent study by Allen and Seaman (2009) estimated that the number of U.S. students enrolled in at least one online or blended course was over 1 million. Minimal research has been done on how working in isolation, when a teacher is removed from the daily contact with…

Accounts in the media often demonize teachers and misrepresent what is happening in schools. Meanwhile, teachers' voices are largely absent from the national and international debates on school reform. This dissertation privileges the voices of nine participating Kindergarten through second grade teachers from a variety of public schools,…

This paper tests three theories of class size determination: that schools assign better-behaved students, higher quality teachers, or higher-achieving students into larger classes. Furthermore, we estimate how these methodologies differ between public and private schools. Using a nationally representative sample from the USA, we show that, within…