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…

Success in reading is often a predictor of broader school success, and children who finish elementary school with weak reading skills are at very high risk for dropping out of high school. Increasingly, early literacy programs are incorporating digital applications to enhance literacy teaching and learning. This evaluation of five teachers in…

Since the Florida State Department of Education promoted lesson study as a stateside teacher professional development model using the Race to the Top funding, school districts across the state have taken various approaches to promote lesson study. However, we do not know yet how district leaders made sense of this new model of teacher professional…

Previous research has suggested that culturally relevant teaching is central to teaching African American students. This study explores relationship building and use of students' funds of knowledge during a field placements practicum as tools to help predominantly White, preservice teachers achieve intended outcomes of culturally relevant teaching…

Many K-12 teachers struggle to meet the needs of diverse learners as school reforms promote new disciplinary literacy requirements. In response, language education scholars have argued that teachers must develop "disciplinary linguistic knowledge" (DLK), or an understanding of language in their content area and an ability to design…

We use value-added models to calculate measures of effectiveness for new elementary school teachers in Florida between 2001-02 and 2005-06, then compare the attrition and mobility patterns of more and less effective teachers overall and across various types of schools. While we do not find evidence that schools are disproportionately losing their…

A study determined the performance levels, energy savings, and occupant acceptance of occupancy sensors that were installed in a Florida small office building and two elementary schools. Performance data was collected in 15-minute intervals. Aggregate time-of-day lighting load profiles were compared before and after the installation and throughout…

A reaccreditation self-study project was conducted at St. Jerome Catholic School in Ft. Lauderdale (Florida). The school's 325 students come from a predominantly blue collar, ethnically and racially diverse community. The curriculum provides a solid academic background of core subjects, special subjects, and extracurricular activities. The project…

School culture has recently emerged as a framework for the study and interpretation of the structure and development of schools. A work culture productivity model is described, and the development of a culture instrument is reported. The concept of school work culture, a subset of systems culture, refers to the collective work patterns of a…

The purpose of this paper is to describe the model used to evaluate the two-year Allegany Grant between the Peace Education Foundation and the Miami-Dade County Public Schools that focused on reducing school violence through implementing the "Peace Works" program. A mixed method design using simultaneous methodologies was employed. For…

This study assessed the effects of participating in Florida's Prekindergarten Early Intervention Program (PKEI) on fourth grade mathematics and reading standardized norm-referenced test scores and the incidence of retention. PKEI serves mostly 4-year-old children from families whose income falls below the federal poverty level. Study subjects were…

After needs assessments were conducted in six Florida school districts, strategies were developed for implementing creative and relevant workshops emphasizing curricular innovations and individualized instruction. Procedures and techniques evolved from 50 workshops given to 1500 elementary school teachers. Among the activities were: multimedia…

A Florida elementary school cafeteria, retrofitted with a fluorescent lighting system that dims in response to available daylight, was evaluated through real time measurement of lighting and air conditioning power, work plane illumination, and interior/exterior site conditions. The new system produced a 27 percent reduction in lighting power due…

This study evaluated the effectiveness of mathematics inservice training for elementary teachers delivered in the longer-term institute format. The goal of the institute was to improve teachers' ability to provide meaningful, effective mathematics instruction to elementary school children. Specifically the investigators sought answers to the…

This study was conducted to learn whether black educators who had been principals of all-black schools experienced job displacement during the period when schools were being desegregated. Reactive and nonreactive data-collecting techniques were used to gather information on 343 black administrators. The findings indicate that during the…