The enactment of various federal mandates has increased accountability measures for schools and superintendents. The mandates aim to increase student achievement and learning. With the growing diversity of student populations in schools, districts are required to address the varied academic and non-academic needs of students. As the system leader…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explore how school leaders in high poverty California Distinguished schools utilize readiness for change strategies, in conjunction with their understanding of their context, to build a grounded theory of the processes and practices which lead to successful change implementation. Conceptual Framework: The…

The purpose of this qualitative, descriptive, single case study was to explore how K-8 teachers, lead teachers, and school administrators in an Arizona school district experienced shared leadership and described its influence on student and school success. The theoretical foundation that provided a lens for this study was the theory of shared…

This qualitative exploratory case study uses phenomenology to conduct an investigation of teacher collaboration and teacher empowerment within a Professional Learning Community (PLC) at a Title 1 elementary school. This study examined the experiences of five elementary and three administrators to learn about their perspectives on teacher…

As the numbers of multilingual learners with disabilities increase in classrooms across the country and the achievement gap between multilingual learners with disabilities and their typical peers continues to widen, more research is needed to learn more about how teachers and administrators can support multilingual learners with disabilities. This…

School leadership has progressed from a principal-led position to a dual-leader position with assistant principals. Assistant principals have stepped into instructional leadership roles and have been identified as overseeing special education (Best, 2016; Gaston, 2005; Walton, 2008). Despite studies determining that assistant principals are…

Special Education students across the United States are performing less well than their non-Special Education peers (US Department of Education, 2017). At a local level, researcher has observed that Special Education students are not served through the use of adequate accommodations, instructional strategies, or best practices to support inclusion…

The purpose of this multiple case study was to examine the successes, challenges, and factors identified to mitigate or overcome the identified challenges, as experienced by program directors, faculty, and staff, in the development and implementation of transition and post-secondary education programs, for students identified with intellectual…

Problem: Interdisciplinary teaming has been noted as a critical element of the middle school model associated with higher student achievement. Yet, research on middle school teams' use of common planning time suggests that the majority of meeting time is spent discussing student behavior/issues, discussing student learning problems/issues, and…

This descriptive case study examined educators' perceptions of the effect of tiered instruction on the reading achievement of kindergarten students. The purpose was to explore and describe current cultural and structural conditions that support or inhibit effective school-level implementation of a Response to Intervention (RtI) model. This study…

The purpose of this study was to examine female principals that once taught within the school that they now lead. This study explored the transition from colleague to superior and discussed Sergiovanni's "Sources of Authority" (1992) that are employed by female administrators to balance social relationships while maintaining high levels…

This qualitative multiple case study concerned how school principals in charter, private, and public school settings experience autonomy, based on the schools' governance structures and accountability systems. Principal autonomy was defined as the authority that school principals exercise to lead staff effectively, to make decisions based on…

The purpose of this study was to identify the benefits and challenges of co-teaching, as self-reported by high school general education teachers, special education teachers, and administrators and determine if they shared common beliefs regarding supporting students with special needs within the general education curriculum. Participants included…

The purpose of this study was to model, through structural equation modeling techniques, the relationships among superintendent practices of collaborative goal-setting, establishment of nonnegotiable goals for achievement and instruction, board alignment with and support of district goals, monitoring goals for achievement and instruction, use of…

The revised Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA, 2004) has offered a change of practice regarding the identification of students with a learning disability. Under IDEA (2004) educators are encouraged to use Response to Intervention (RTI) as a method to determine eligibility for special education services. In an RTI…