Community colleges are under pressure to educate a growing student population while economic resources in higher education are diminishing. One measure of success for colleges is the ability to retain students. Due to the varied nature of the community college population, measuring student retention is challenging. One facet of student retention…

Charter schools see as many as one in four teachers leave annually, and recent evidence attributes much of this turnover to provisions affected by collective bargaining processes and state laws such as salary, benefits, job security, and working hours. There have been many recent efforts to improve teacher voice in charter schools (Kahlenberg…

In this article, we explain how overly prescriptive, rigid state statutory and regulatory policy frameworks regarding teacher evaluation, tenure and employment decisions outstrip the statistical reliability and validity of proposed measures of teaching effectiveness. We begin with a discussion of the emergence of highly prescriptive state…

State-level battles over changes in education policy have shifted in many places from legislative chambers to courthouses, as unions and other critics of new laws challenge them on the grounds that they violate state constitutions and worker contracts. Republican governors and lawmakers--their ranks bolstered by the 2010 elections--won passage…