On February 18-19, 2016, representatives of 10 states participating in the Credit When It's Due (CWID) initiative attended a convening held at the University of Utah. The meeting was led by the CWID Research Team and sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The Kresge Foundation, on behalf of the CWID Funders Collaborative. The…

State longitudinal data systems (SLDSs) have created more opportunities than ever before for rigorous research to influence education policy decisions. As state practitioners who play central roles in building and using our states' longitudinal data systems, we are excited about their promise for supporting policymaking and research. Yet, we also…

Policy makers at the federal level have embraced an educator effectiveness agenda, which in turn has driven many states across the country to rapidly develop and implement new and more complex teacher evaluation systems. It is increasingly clear that the success of these nascent teacher evaluation systems partly depends on the will, skill, and…

Schools across the United States are facing budgetary pressures on a scale not seen in generations. Times of fiscal exigency force policymakers and education practitioners to pay more attention to the return on various categories of public investment in education. The sizes of the classes in which students are educated are often a focus of these…

As a research and technical assistance organization, CNA Education would be the last to deny the importance of good data and the first to applaud efforts to improve the quality and scope of the data available. Solid data are critical to CNA's mission to further general understanding of the efficacy of specific education reform initiatives and to…

The purpose of this study was to determine the impact professional development has on student achievement. Specifically, the study was to examine the impact of teachers' professional development activities on student achievement. This was carried out by quantitatively examining the amounts of professional development (number of activities and…

Traditional histories of American college composition instruction in the 19th and 20th centuries examine primarily the textbooks used in those courses, then draw conclusions based on the content of those textbooks about the activities and attitudes expressed in the classroom. The canon of composition historiography is lacking in several ways: the…

This report describes the use of Lead Turnaround Partners (LTPs) in the current School Improvement Grant (SIG) program and provides the results of document review, surveys, and interviews with eight State Education Agencies and seven Lead Turnaround Partner organizations. The study focuses on the implementation of the transformation and turnaround…

In the fall of 2009, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded a three-year project proposed by the International Baccalaureate (IB) to demonstrate the feasibility of increasing the participation of minority students and students in poverty in its Middle Years Programme (MYP) and Diploma Programme (DP) in selected school districts in the…

Three teams of teachers and administrators from three adult basic education programs in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia participated in a 2-year action research project that focused on developing approaches that local programs can use to document the outcomes of student participation in adult education programs. Facilitators helped the teams…

Using techniques of the reputational method to study community power structure, this report identifies components of power structure in a Tennessee school district, demonstrates that proven methodologies can facilitate educational leaders' reform efforts, and serves as a pilot study for further investigation. Researchers investigated the district…

Theoretical concepts about situational management decisions are incorporated in an investigation of school administrators in Tennessee to determine (1) whether administrators can be identified who possess specified leadership characteristics and (2) if those leaders consider employee maturity criteria when selecting employees for tasks. The study…

This document enumerates and discusses needs for community service and continuing education programs in the state of Tennessee. Its contents are based on the Statewide Report drawn up by the State Agency for Title I in Tennessee, and on responses to 800 questionnaires mailed to recipients of the Report requesting the identification of other…

Accurately estimating the number of female high school administrators is difficult because (1) comprehensive studies by individual position are nonexistent; (2) most state departments of education do not collect or report such data; (3) limited samples are used in studies; and (4) researchers and reporters tend to aggregate positions. Researchers…

Review of tracking research reveals a small number of well-designed studies with equivocal results. The Tennessee Class Size Study demonstrates convincingly that student achievement is better in smaller K-3 classes and the effect continues later in regular-sized classes. More randomized, controlled field trials such as this are needed. (SK)