Over the past two decades homeschooling has become increasingly popular, but this educational alternative has lacked rigorous empirical evaluation because of data limitations. Since little data are available for individual students, we examine homeschooling participation at the statewide and district level in Wisconsin. The most compelling finding…

This study evaluates how welcoming thirty American cities--the twenty-five largest and five smaller "hotspots"--are to "nontraditional" problem-solvers and solutions. It assumes that the balky bureaucracies meant to improve K-12 education and hold leaders accountable are so calcified by policies, programs, contracts, and…

It is widely acknowledged that context matters, that it affects leadership practices. A large body of descriptive studies documents common elements in the work of school superintendents. What is less well known is how superintendents' leadership may be expressed very differently given the varying contexts in which they work. The purpose of this…

This paper draws upon data from a longitudinal study of students in four Wisconsin elementary schools to probe for the linkages between school- and home-related variables and students' academic achievement. Data were collected from fall 1979 through spring 1982. Subjects, enrolled in the third grade during the 1979-80 school year, were followed…