Background: The charter school movement relies on teachers as critical components. Teacher commitment is an important aspect of teachers' lives, because it is an internal force for teachers to grow as professionals. It is also considered one of the crucial factors in influencing various educational outcomes, including teacher effectiveness,…

Past research indicates that teachers' beliefs are influential in their decisions and behaviors in the classroom. Teachers are also influenced by the socioeconomic status of their students. The present study on beliefs and evaluation of knowledge about working with students with learning disabilities included kindergarten through 12th grade…

This study explored the relationship between school level and the psychosocial construct of a growth mindset school culture. Data was collected on the What's My School Mindset (WMSM) Survey from a stratified random sample of PK-12 faculty and administrators (n = 347) in 30 schools across a large northwestern state. The overarching research…

Each year, Austin Independent School District Department of Research and Evaluation (DRE) staff develop a plan of work to describe the scope of work for the coming year. The plans that make up this document identify programs to be evaluated and services to be provided by DRE staff and provide the blueprints for evaluation that staff will follow…

Full-service community schools aim to reduce educational inequality by addressing the multifaceted needs of low-income children and youth. Critical to this task is the ability of these schools to generate sufficient social capital to provide students, families, and teachers with essential resources. Using data from a qualitative case study, this…

The media suggest that accountability pressure increases teacher stress and drives teachers away from teaching, resulting in teachers leaving disadvantaged schools that serve larger proportions of poor and minority students. However, no prior work has systematically examined the changes in the national trends of teacher turnover in response to No…

In 2009, district data revealed that new students at Appoquinimink School District (ASD) were struggling academically and socially. Several specific steps were taken to improve the outcomes of these new students. First, an in-depth review of the relevant data regarding new students in the district was conducted. A white paper on relevant research…

School gardens programs and garden-based education are positioned to become fixtures in educational institutions given recent trends and the national interest in gardens at school sites. Agricultural education professionals have integrated school gardens into core science, social studies, math, and language arts courses as well as agricultural…

Improving performance is a high stakes undertaking for schools who are operating within highly prescriptive testing and inspection regimes and a dynamic policy environment requiring Senior Leaders to be innovative and well-informed regarding best practice both nationally and internationally. In this context there can be a tendency to fall back on…

Why is it that so many women seem to climb the administrative ladder leading to the superintendency frequently and with relative ease, but do not reach that top rung? Data to help address this question is presented here. These data are part of a larger research project completed in the fall of 2006. In addressing this question, an overview of the…

As integrated STEM education becomes more commonplace, the number of inclusive STEM classrooms containing students with disabilities will continue to rise. This presents many challenges to both STEM education teachers and Special education teachers. Do STEM education and Special education teachers have the appropriate credentials to effectively…

Even though K-12 districts and schools are among the nation's biggest employers, little if any information exists on educators' experiences with workplace sexual misconduct. In the winter of 2018, the Education Week Research Center set out to address this information gap by surveying teachers and administrators about their experiences with and…

Purpose: School choice policies are expected to generate competition leading to improvement in school practices. However, little is known about how competition operates in public education--particularly in charter schools. This paper examines charter-school leaders' competitive perception formation and the actions taken in response to competition.…

For 14 years, the "Education Next" annual survey has tracked American opinion on education policy. This year's survey, administered in May 2020, provides an early look at how the experiences of the past few months as the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools nationwide may shape Americans' views on education policy going forward. The survey's…

The American School District Panel (ASDP) is the newest addition to the RAND Corporation's American Educator Panels (AEP), which are designed to survey panels of educators several times each year. RAND recruits AEP members using probabilistic sampling methods, which allow researchers to weight survey results to generalize to the national…