This study aimed to address the growing problem in education, the need to retain highly qualified teachers in the classroom. Beyond the task of just filling positions, experienced teachers bring unique skills to the school, making them better instructors (Melnick & Meister, 2008). This is a challenging topic; roughly 29% of teachers who left…

Recent charter school enrollment trends suggest that many parents are choosing to enroll students in charter schools instead of traditional public schools, even though data indicate public school achievement is equal to or above charter schools. Guided by Rogers and Maslow's humanistic theory, the purpose of the study was to examine reasons why…

High-tech tools can be integrated to serve a number of purposes in the mathematics classroom, with different purposes being appropriate for different learning goals. We focus specifically on the various purposes for interactive simulations (sims). This study followed three experienced middle-school mathematics teachers integrating PhET sims into…

Background/Context: Charter schools are commonly discussed as being more effective at matching student and family interests with school mission, ensuring family choice of educational products and improving education quality and the efficiency of resource use as a result of the competitive dynamics they are assumed to generate between themselves…

This case study examines the role of parents as situationally positioned educators during summer months. It illuminates the processes employed by a public charter school to empower parents to support student learning. The study is an action research case study of one school in a small network of schools. The goal was to determine the effectiveness…

The use of homework has been a controversial topic in education for many years: what types of homework to give, how much, and how often. In previous years, Ocean Montessori School (a pseudonym), the site of this study, offered homework like that of traditional public schools, such as worksheets and rote skill practice. Feeling conflicted about the…

"The Mirage" describes the widely held perception among education leaders that they already know how to help teachers improve, and that they could achieve their goal of great teaching in far more classrooms if they just applied what they knew more widely. However, research suggests that despite enormous and admirable investments of time…

The rigidity of teachers unions has been given as a primary reason for their lack of representation among America's rapidly growing, although still relatively small, charter school sector. In the case of post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, the city rapidly converted from a union-backed teacher workforce to a largely nonunionized charter school…

Reigeluth et al. ("Educ Technol" 48(6):32-39, 2008) proposed major and secondary functions for educational technology systems for the learner-centered paradigm of education. However, the functions proposed should be formatively evaluated and revised using a variety of cases to develop a better understanding of how technology can support…

As K-12 online programs mature, it is increasingly important that they work to retain their effective teachers. However, there is little research that has examined teacher satisfaction in K-12 online learning environments. Our analysis of 22 interviews with 11 teachers at an online charter school identified three primary factors that influenced…

This report describes the implementation of professional development (PD) reforms and efforts to use teacher effectiveness (TE) data to inform PD through the third year of the initiative for all seven sites: Hillsborough County Public Schools (HCPS), Shelby County Schools (SCS, formerly Memphis City Schools), Pittsburgh Public Schools (PPS), and…

There is a growing interest in the quandary of literacy and proficiency amongst K-12 students in the United States. Similarly, because of uncharted research about biliteracy amongst African-American students in urban schools and benefits of Spanish fluency, communicative gaps are increased and fluency is breached. If advantages are properly…

This article examines the intersection of race, gender, class, and academic success through an ethnographic case study in a Texas charter high school. The 98% working-class, Latino student population was exposed to an array of stigmas ascribed to their persons based on negative social stereotypes of race, ethnicity, gender, and class due to the…

Some gifted students at a local elementary charter school were not performing at a level commensurate with their abilities. The purpose of this narrative study was to gain insight into why some gifted students struggled academically in the classroom by examining the perceptions of teachers who worked directly with these students. The theory of…

Purpose: This article highlights the complexity of accountability issues associated with one charter school from the charter application process, operation, and functioning of the external mechanism and the internal mechanism to hold the charter school accountable, closure of the school, and consequences of the charter school's closure on its…