To date, there has been little analysis of MSI Title III and V grant-funded programs across all MSI categories. For researchers, practitioners, and policymakers, it is imperative to explore the contributions of MSIs as manifested in Title III and V grant-funded programs. The purpose of this study is to analyze MSI Title III and V programs based on…

A growing body of research has been documenting the pivotal role that philanthropic funding plays in advancing state and local charter school reform. However, there is little understanding of the geographic flow of these funding patterns and the market, policy, and organizational conditions that have concentrated funding in some clusters of states…

Kindergarten has become increasingly academically oriented, and U.S. kindergarten teachers are increasingly called upon to implement policies that require assessment and promote accountability. However, little recent research has focused on kindergarten teachers' beliefs about kindergarten readiness. The authors examined teachers' beliefs related…

The Student Growth Objectives are assessments created locally or by commercial educational organizations. The students' scores from the Student Growth Objectives are included in teacher summative evaluation as one of the measures of teacher's effectiveness. The high amplitude of the requirements in teacher evaluation raised a concern of whether…

The implementation of value-added models of teacher evaluation continue to expand in public education, but the effects of using student test scores to evaluate K-12 physical educators necessitates further discussion. Using the five National Standards for K-12 Physical Education from the Society of Health and Physical Educators America (SHAPE),…

Evaluations of teacher preparation programs (TPPs) based in part on the performance of program completers have emerged as an education reform strategy in several states and have become central features of the Race to the Top (RTTT) grant competition. The objective of this policy review is to examine how the state of Tennessee measured and reported…

Over the last decade, accountability reform has been at the forefront of the domestic policy agenda. Although the Obama Administration was critical of some elements of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), its policies endorsed high-stakes testing and expanded the scope of the stakes. With the Race to the Top and an NCLB waiver process, the administration…

The state of Florida has taken an unprecedented approach to teacher professional development in its Race to the Top (RTTT) Program application by proposing to promote an international innovation that originates in Japan, "lesson study," as a statewide teacher professional development model. Since winning the US$700 million RTTT funding…

This technical supplement to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Employment and Training (E&T) evaluation final reports presents details of the technical approach used for creating analysis variables and estimating impacts of treatment group services on outcomes, including employment, earnings, and SNAP participation. It also…

There is a dearth of empirical work that examines the relationships between federal financial aid policy and institutional financial aid priorities and expenditures. This study uses Resource Dependency Theory to explore whether changes the amount of financial aid awarded by colleges and universities during the last fifty years are best explained…

American students in the 21st century are growing up with Internet accessible technology available at their fingertips. Considering this and the continued pressure to compete in a global society, The United States' Department of Education's National Education Technology Plan (NETP) (2010) calls for educators to leverage technology in order to…

This First Look report presents selected findings about student financial aid during the 2015-16 academic year. These findings are based on data from the 2015-16 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:16), a nationally representative sample survey of undergraduate and graduate students enrolled any time between July 1, 2015, and June 30,…

This study considers the impact of federal funding on the administrative expenditures of local school districts since the passage of the No-Child-Left-Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001. Under NCLB, federal education funds were made contingent upon a variety of accountability and reporting standards, creating new administrative costs and challenges for…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) represent an unprecedented change in American education. As an increasingly integral part of the school accountability movement under No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, responsibility for implementing CCSS rests largely with school leadership. One important factor in the success or failure of these…

This longitudinal study examined the professional perceptions of educational leaders as to the fairness and impact of teacher evaluation and compensation reforms under Race to the Top. The study surveyed graduate students in education and educational leadership programs to assess changes in their perceptions from prior to RTTT implementation…