This study investigated the impact of professional development support structures for enhancing teacher mastery of Response to Intervention (RTI) in an urban elementary school setting. With a focus on effective implementation strategies, the research explored the role of tailored professional development initiatives in equipping educators with the…

The academic, social, and emotional needs of students are rapidly increasing while staff interest in working in special education programs, serving some of the neediest students, is declining. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to explore a specialized social-emotional support program across elementary, middle, and high school levels…

Modern suburban school districts have experienced a significant shift in demographics over the last decade making them more diverse in race, ethnicity, income and ability level. The income diversity in suburban districts can hide pockets of significant need in the community. Due to the formulas associated with federal programs, suburban districts…

This mixed-methodology case study explored one district's attempt to provide teacher leadership training in an effort to increase feelings of empowerment. Empowerment is defined as the degree to which an individual feels capable of influencing his or her work role and context (Spreitzer, 1995) and in the field of education, empowering teachers is…

Since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, standardized test scores have revealed that the U.S. public education system has been unable to adequately address improvement of academic achievement. For 20 years, educators have been promoting professional learning communities (PLCs) as a solution to improving K-12 academic achievement.…

This study implemented an exploratory mixed-methods design to better understand how the characteristics of a principal, specifically the strategies, behaviors, and actions, lead to the perception of empowerment as perceived by the teachers themselves. An expert panel identified three "highly successful" principals assigned to elementary…

There is a persistent and significant gap in the achievement of students who attend high-poverty schools and those who attend low-poverty schools. Students in high-poverty schools, the majority of whom are African American and Hispanic, are not achieving the same levels of academic success as their low-poverty or White counterparts. Retention…

The purpose of this study was to investigate teacher retention and teachers' perceptions of cultural leadership in select North Carolina elementary year round and traditional elementary schools. The participants in this study were North Carolina elementary teachers that participated in the 2008 North Carolina Teacher Working Conditions Survey…