What is the link between neuroscience and education? Can one measure the phenomenon of learning and make predictions by charting student performance? How does the knowledge of neuroscience inform educators to objectively and effectively meet the unique needs of all learners and address discrepancies in subsets of student population? Questions like…

In our data-rich world, there are strong calls for greater focus on data literacy as increasingly, 21st century jobs require some level of data literacy. Data literacy is inherently STEM integration, especially when working with real-world scenarios, as it requires bringing math and technology into the science classroom to interpret and engage…

This dissertation is a case study of a professional development effort in a large urban school district over the course of one school year. With their district identified for improvement under the requirements of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 2001, district leaders were under pressure take corrective action. As part of their plan…

Chronic absenteeism is often referred to as a problem hidden in plain sight (Chang & Romero, 2008). In recent years, more communities around the United States have been intentional on improving student attendance and limiting the impact of chronic absenteeism. Using qualitative interviews, we sought to understand how one community was…

Increasingly, states and districts are combining student growth measures with rigorous, rubric-aligned teacher observations in constructing teacher evaluation measures. Although the student growth or value-added components of these measures have received much research and policy attention, the results of this study suggest that the data generated…

School districts increasingly push school leaders to utilize multiple measures of teacher effectiveness, such as observation ratings or value-added scores, in making talent management decisions, including teacher hiring, assignment, support, and retention, but we know little about the local conditions that promote or impede these processes. We…

Testing of students and computer systems to store, manage, analyze, and report the resulting test data have grown hand-in-hand. Extant research on teacher use of electronically stored data are largely qualitative and focused on the conditions necessary (but not sufficient) for effective teacher data use. Absent from the research is objective…

The purpose of this paper is to enhance our understanding of districts that are implementing sustainable professional learning in data-driven decision-making (DDDM) to improve student achievement. The data-informed leadership framework, comprised of leadership practices that acknowledge the complexities that play into data use, guided the inquiry.…

In the current accountability policy context, access to and use of research evidence are central to district and school improvement. Our study examines the network of relations between central office administrators and principals using a political lens to consider the ways in which the underlying politics in a district may call into question some…

As states approach the funding cliff marking the end of federal stimulus help for education, school districts will be feeling more financial pain than they're experiencing now. But there's good news amid the bad: Big city districts are showing schools nationwide a way to save money and improve efficiency by working together. They've created the…

Although there is an emerging body of research that examines data-driven decision making (DDDM) in schools, little attention has been paid to how local leaders strategically frame sensemaking around data use. This exploratory case examines how district and school leaders consciously framed the implementation of DDDM in one urban high school.…

This project compared annual mandated assessment results for an urban charter school, two comparable urban schools and the encompassing urban district. Scores in grades three through eight in the target school were analyzed to determine the percentage of students scoring at proficiency levels three and four (scores of one and two are considered…

This article traces how the work of instructional leadership in the urban high school embodies a response to particular pressures in the school's environment. Based on evidence from multiple-case study research in four urban districts, the article demonstrates how supervisory and nonsupervisory leaders fashioned responses to the district (and…

Urban school systems are large businesses, charged with running a wide range of noninstructional functions that typically do not garner them much national notice. Now, thanks to the work of a coalition of big-city districts, their leaders are gathering data on how those operations are run, in the hope of improving their business practices. The…

"The Infrastructure of Accountability" brings together leading and emerging scholars who set forth an ambitious conceptual framework for understanding the full impact of large-scale, performance-based accountability systems on education. Over the past 20 years, schools and school systems have been utterly reshaped by the demands of…