Discussions about the ways of improving high schools have frequently considered school size and many "new" schools reduce the size to personalize the school experience and produce more positive student outcomes. Interest in designing new small schools has increased. Embedded in many of the small school design initiatives is the belief that new…

Charter schools have been a mechanism of school reform for three decades (Finn, Manno, & Vanourek, 2000; Greene et al, 2010) and have received increased attention during the current Obama administration (Loveless, 2010). Studies on the effectiveness of charter schools demonstrate mixed results and that school quality varies dramatically, but…

As rural community colleges face mounting fiscal pressure, the ability to attract adjunct faculty members to support the institutional mission becomes increasingly important. Although the professional literature documents differences between rural, suburban, and urban community colleges, the effect of this institutional diversity on the role and…

The present study sought to uncover relationships between the personal characteristics of teachers and their preferences for models of teaching. A purposeful sample included 12 elementary instructors of heterogeneous classes with a cluster of gifted students in urban school districts within Southern California, all of who were participants in a…

The aim of this document is to give teachers and administrators the contextual and pedagogical tools for the late immersion program. It acts as a guide for beginning and experienced teachers who need to update their knowledge regarding this program and its details. For many working in this area, it also confirms their daily practices as well as…

"Straight A's: Public Education Policy and Progress" is a biweekly newsletter that focuses on education news and events both in Washington, DC and around the country. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) A Common Understanding: Final K-12 Standards in English Language Arts and Mathematics Released on June 2; (2) "Diplomas Count":…

Public flagship universities provide excellence to students who cannot afford high-quality private institutions. Yet many of these universities direct aid to wealthy students who will attend college without it. Meantime, many high-achieving minority and poor students wind up in lesser institutions or do not attend college at all. In fact, some…

The aim is to investigate female and male managers' learning environments with particular focus on their opportunities for and barriers to learning and career development in the managerial work of a male-dominated industrial company. In the case study 42 managers, 15 women and 27 men in the company were interviewed. The findings demonstrate that…

For the past couple of decades, customer relationship management has been quietly establishing itself as the way everybody does business. Migrating to the education community only in the past five years or so, it has acquired a more genteel transcription of its acronym: constituent relationship management. However one decodes the letters, CRM is…

The education market is becoming more competitive and far more crowded. The economic downturn has caused many families to reconsider their priorities, re-evaluate their budgets, and refocus their attention. Once considered one of the dark arts, whose very tenets were unacceptable in a mission-based environment, branding is now widely regarded as…

A number of recent policy initiatives, including NCLB's highly qualified teacher provisions, have sought to improve the qualifications of teachers and their distribution across schools. Little is known, however, about the impact of these policies. In this study, we use population data on teachers and schools in Illinois to examine changes in the…

Drawing on a year and a half of ethnographic research in three New York City small high schools, this study examines the role of the school in managing school choice and asks what social processes are associated with principals' disparate approaches. Although district policy did not allow principals to select students based on their performance,…

This study examines the Noyce Program, which provides scholarships for STEM majors in return for teaching in high need schools. The perceptions of 555 scholarship recipients were investigated using hierarchical cluster analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and Rasch analysis to determine how the scholarship influenced their commitments to…

Competition in the market is a perennial and ever-increasing problem for independent schools. How schools can meet this pressure and find ways to attract (the best) students is a continuing question and one that will get more onerous as the government funding for education is, in relative terms, decreasing. One of the ways in which schools can…

The purpose of this article is to discuss recent changes in the Commission on Rehabilitation Counselor Certification "Code of Professional Ethics for Rehabilitation Counselors", effective January 1, 2010, that are most relevant to rehabilitation counselor educators. The authors provide a brief overview of these key changes along with implications…