Background/Context: Teacher preparation programs (TPPs) face increasing pressure from the federal government, states, and accreditation agencies to improve the quality of their practices and graduates, yet they often do not possess enough data to make evidence-based reforms. Purpose/Objective: This manuscript has four objectives: (a) to present…

Background: Data-driven decision making continues to be a common feature of educational reform agendas across the globe. In many U.S. schools, the teacher team meeting is a key setting in which data use is intended to take place, with the aim of planning instruction to address students' needs. However, most prior research has not examined how the…

Background: Much research has been done on the factors that influence teachers' work. Yet, the nature and scope of those factors, and their impact on teachers, remain unclear. Indeed, different literature bases on teachers' work present different and often contradictory conclusions. For example, some researchers claim that mandated accountability…

Background: Scholars widely acknowledge that politics help explain why policies are adopted and how they play out in states, districts, and schools. To date, political analyses of education reform tend to isolate a particular policy and examine the politics of its adoption or implementation, but pay less attention to the effects of the politics of…

Background/Context: As accountability pressures have mounted toward ever-higher targets under the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, low-achieving schools have sought new tools for raising achievement. The association between parent involvement and student achievement is well established, though the association is an indirect relationship mediated…

Background/Context: With the installation of No Child Left Behind, teachers, particularly those who serve marginalized students, have increasingly been told what and how to teach. Previous research demonstrates that teachers can act as mediators between policy and practice, even within coercive environments such as those generated by high-stakes…

Background: Current classroom practices have largely been shaped by changing student demographics, including English language learners (ELLs), and evolving accountability policies. The teacher professional development intervention in this study takes place against this backdrop. Research Questions: This study examined change in teachers' knowledge…

Background/Context: In response to state-level test-based accountability and the federal No Child Left Behind Act, school administrators increasingly view centralized curriculum and prescribed instructional strategies as the most direct means of increasing student performance. This movement toward standardization reduces teachers' autonomy and…

Background/Context: A challenge for teachers who support teaching for and about democracy is doing so while being pressed into directives rooted in corporatocracy, a political manifestation of neoliberalism. The accountability movement today, particularly No Child Left Behind, is rooted in much more firmly in corporatocracy than democracy.…

Background/Context: Considerable controversy surrounds the issue of whether high-stakes statewide accountability programs have led to more equitable educational opportunities for all students. Some researchers suggest that these programs have focused attention on improving the achievement of students of color from low socioeconomic backgrounds.…

Examines English school inspection before and since 1993 reforms, observations procedures that some schools have adopted, and procedures of various colleges. The balance of accountability and support for improvement varies depending on the details and culture of inspection. In the United States, some experiments with inspection are occurring, and…