The State Higher Education Executive Officers Association's (SHEEO) "Communities of Practice" project builds upon SHEEO's ongoing efforts to measure the capacity and effective use of state postsecondary data systems and provides states with opportunities to develop solutions to common issues with those systems. The sixth Community of…

The portfolio management models (PMM) has emerged as an important idea in educational governance over the last decade. In PMM systems, a district or other form of authorizer oversees a collection of independent organizations that operate schools according to their particular philosophy and strategic orientation. Yet underlying the design of PMMs…

Presenters at the State of the States Roundtable session at the 2014 National Education Finance Conference in Louisville were invited to submit their papers for publication. These papers address the following topics: (1) State issues affecting P-12 and/or higher education funding; (2) Funding priorities/trends for P-12 and/or higher education; (3)…

In February 2015 a large group of scholars, researchers, and practitioners interested in P-20 finance issues gathered in St. Louis, Missouri, for the National Education Finance Academy's annual conference, on February 25-27, 2015 to discuss, among multiple topics, the state of P-20 finance in all 50 states. There were 35 states represented in the…

On November 19, 2009, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced that it would invest $290 million to support effective teaching as a means to ensure all students receive the education they need to succeed in high school and beyond. The foundation made six-year grants to support four Intensive Partnership for Effective Teaching (IP) sites…

An instrument was developed to measure the attitudes of public school board members on issues such as the expenditure of additional local money for various programs and services, the determination of teacher raises, and required minimum proficiency tests for high school graduation. A total of 66 completed questionnaires was usable from the 112…

This paper redefines and clarifies the standpoints of environmental attitudes (EA), knowledge scales (EK), and affiliated studies. Considering the quality of environmental education studies, this paper tries to give a sharp and concrete message to environmental science educators and researchers and strengthen the paths of environmental education…

The effects of class size on student achievement in science were studied using grade 8 science achievement mean scale scores for 138 Tennessee public school districts, focusing on the total population of districts and on districts in the upper and lower quartile of science performance (n=52). The dependent variable was district aggregate science…

School violence and related disruptions have become common occurrences in American schools. This paper examines how violence is manifesting itself in schools. The report offers the results of a study in which a survey was administered to the schools in the midstate area of Tennessee. The survey were created in consultation with school resource…

After discussing the need for second-order (or structural) reform and Tennessee's leadership in "first wave" legislation, this paper describes selected aspects of Tennessee reform activities and recent events leading to client-centered control. Tennessee's Better Schools Program, consistent with "first-wave" proposals,…

A total of 516 teachers in 25 school systems in Middle Tennessee responded to a questionnaire relating to their attitudes about the Career Ladder Program in Tennessee. The program delineates a five-step classification system: (1) probationary teachers; (2) apprentice teachers; (3) career level I teachers; (4) career level II teachers; and (5)…

Summarized are results of a survey of Tennessee teachers, elementary school principals, and supervisors of instruction regarding their views of environmental education and its implementation. Of the possible respondents, 35.4% returned the survey questionnaire. Frequency tabulations, percentages, and means show that environmental education is…

In 1987, a school-university collaborative project, Positive Attitudes in Tennessee Schools (PATS), was established to improve school-learning environments. This paper presents findings of a study that investigated the effect of school participation in PATS on school climate. A secondary focus was to determine which school-climate variables could…

The Positive Attitudes in Tennessee Schools Project (PATS), a collaborative school-improvement effort, was implemented in Tennessee schools in 1989. The project is based on the premise that a cultural transformation in the schools is needed to provide more supportive learning environments. This paper presents findings of a longitudinal study that…

Tennessee's Better Schools Program includes a Master Teacher Program that has three components: teacher education, clinical supervision of beginning teachers, and a career ladder based on performance. In conjunction with the establishment of the Master Teacher Program, 23 master teacher competencies for teacher evaluation have been defined.…