Community colleges are under pressure to educate a growing student population while economic resources in higher education are diminishing. One measure of success for colleges is the ability to retain students. Due to the varied nature of the community college population, measuring student retention is challenging. One facet of student retention…

An increasing number of states are mandating teacher performance be considered in educator employment decisions, including awarding tenure and layoffs, according to a 50-state policy review of teacher tenure laws. Tenure laws have historically granted job protections based on years of employment. The Education Commission of the States (ECS)…

In this article, we explain how overly prescriptive, rigid state statutory and regulatory policy frameworks regarding teacher evaluation, tenure and employment decisions outstrip the statistical reliability and validity of proposed measures of teaching effectiveness. We begin with a discussion of the emergence of highly prescriptive state…

There is broad agreement that teacher quality is related to student achievement, but there is far less agreement about the degree to which school districts and administrators are constrained in making policies to improve teacher quality that might also affect teacher employment and working conditions. Conventional wisdom holds that state law and…

This report describes a practicum project that designed, developed, and implemented a model collective bargaining procedure for use by educators in small and medium-sized districts in florida. Section 1 of the report presents a brief historical perspective on collective bargaining for teachers in the U.S. and public employee bargaining in Florida,…

A questionnaire was used to survey county school health education coordinators, supervisors or contacts in Florida. Forty contacts representing 24 rural and 16 urban school districts returned the completed questionnaire. A brief comment accompanies each of the listed responses to the nine questions on the current status of health education in…