Background & Context: Accurate, reliable, and scalable measurement of classroom quality is critical to ensure that children benefit from early childhood programs. Early childhood classroom quality is most commonly measured using classroom observation tools serving multiple purposes including (1) teacher support (e.g., coaching, professional…

The authors examined the ecological validity of using observation-based scores to evaluate individual teachers' effectiveness, mirroring their use by school administrators. Using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System, the authors asked (a) how similar are teachers' emotional support, classroom organization, and instructional support scores from…

This research evaluated the psychometric properties of Friedman's (1999) Teacher Work-Autonomy Scale (TWA) to determine whether it was an acceptable instrument to measure U.S. teacher autonomy in the present educational context. A second purpose was to ascertain the current status of teachers' perceptions of their autonomy from a sample of U.S.…

As Van den Branden (2007) has pointed out, since communicative approaches have been setting the agenda in language teaching in Belgium, the assessment of oral language competence has shifted its focus from form (i.e. accuracy of vocabulary, grammar, pragmatics) to communicative language proficiency (successful use of language in meaningful…

This mixed methods descriptive and causal-comparative study investigates what instructional leadership behaviors effective California high school principals have and what their beliefs are in regards to pedagogy, related issues, and professional issues, either constructivist or instructivist in nature, in the environment of the current NCLB…

The New York City Board of Education has implemented a school quality review system called Performance Assessment in Schools Systemwide: Essential Elements of Exemplary Schools (PASS). The PASS process provides a set of standards of exemplary educational practice and a model for assessing schools in relation to these standards. The process is…