This commentary on the article titled "Examining the Internal Structure Evidence for the Performance Assessment for California Teachers: A Validation Study of the Elementary Literacy Teaching Event for Tier 1 Teacher Licensure" provides an overview of Performance Assessment for California Teachers (PACT), its relationship to edTPA and…

Educational accountability has come to be defined almost exclusively in terms of schools meeting external standards of improvement. Building on a body of scholarship that presents schools as complex organizations, this research proposes that a more robust understanding of educational accountability must be grounded in practitioners perceptions of…

As researchers, decision-makers, and practitioners focus on continuous improvement in education, local-level change is gaining importance. Yet, many local school improvement efforts fail to be fully implemented. Even those that are fully implemented often fail to sustain improvements because the schools are embedded in systems that face multiple…

This dissertation is a program evaluation of an apprenticeship program operated by Siemens Energy, Inc. in Charlotte, North Carolina. The evaluation was based on Stufflebeam's CIPP model of context (C), input (I), process (P), and product (P). The CIPP sought to evaluate (C) current and future objectives, (I) various strategies use to achieve the…

This qualitative interpretive case study used Wenger's (1998) communities of practice (CoP) framework to analyze how the electronic learning community (eLC) process at an established state virtual high school operated like a community of practice. Components of the eLC process were analyzed according to elements of the CoP framework, which…

The NASA Education Implementation Plan (NEIP) provides an understanding of the role of NASA in advancing the nation's STEM education and workforce pipeline. The document outlines the roles and responsibilities that NASA Education has in approaching and achieving the agency's and administration's strategic goals in STEM Education. The specific…

There has been a sea change in teacher evaluation over the past eight years. Inspired in part by President Barack Obama's policies, schools have instituted teacher evaluation systems that include multiple measures of teacher impact. Model systems are aligned to systems of continuous improvement, helping teachers identify areas of weakness in their…

Portland State University's Community Environmental Services (CES) has helped shape the Portland metropolitan region's sustainable materials management practices for more than twenty-five years. CES's research and program development services have benefitted community partners that in turn have provided hundreds of students with rich educational…

Theory suggests that effective teachers should possess a vision for teaching, but the reality of teaching within the current educational policy climate raises questions about teachers' autonomy of their instructional decisions and ultimately their personal convictions for teaching. This exploratory study examines 11 teachers' visions of…

A critical and more nuanced understanding of the multifaceted relationship between projects of peacebuilding and educational provision is starting to develop. Drawing on an epistemological and ontological anchor of critical realism, and a methodology informed by the application of cultural political economy analysis and the strategic relational…

The study aims to gain a better understanding of the national large-scale curriculum process in terms of the used implementation strategies, the function of the reform, and the curriculum coherence perceived by the stakeholders accountable in constructing the national core curriculum in Finland. A large body of school reform literature has shown…

Educational systems across the globe are attempting to reshape the vertical and horizontal dimensions of school accountability. The vertical dimension involves devolution of responsibility to individual schools while the horizontal typically entails promoting the professionalism of leaders and teachers through school networks and school-to-school…

Rhode Island's School Accountability system is in a period of transition to the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The accountability data released October 2017 is based on the 2016-17 administration of the PARCC assessment. Results from the Multi-State Alternate Assessment in ELA/literacy and mathematics are also included. The results of this…

Globally, national curriculum policies are up for renegotiation. These negotiations are shaped by international and national top-down accountability regimes, and an increasing turn towards curriculum centralization and standardization. The new Australian Curriculum (AC) is no exception. The AC is an important educational policy event, one in which…

Over the last two decades, there has been interest in developing federal policies that focus on student outcomes in elementary and secondary education. Perhaps most prominently, the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB; P.L. 107-110), which amended and reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), marked a…