An Analysis of a High Performing School District's Culture
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Corum, Kenneth D.; Schuetz, Todd B.
2012-01-01
This report describes a problem based learning project focusing on the cultural elements of a high performing school district. Current literature on school district culture provides numerous cultural elements that are present in high performing school districts. With the current climate in education placing pressure on school districts to perform…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
LiCalsi, Christina; Citkowicz, Martyna; Friedman, Lawrence B.; Brown, Megan
2015-01-01
The Massachusetts Office of District and School Turnaround (ODST) assists the Commissioner's Districts (the 10 largest districts in the state) and schools within those districts. The assistance focuses on turning around the lowest performing schools in the district while building district capacity to support improvement in other district schools.…
Anchorage School District Profile of Performance, 1998-1999. Assessment and Evaluation Report.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Fenton, Ray
The "Profile of Performance" is the Anchorage School District, Alaska, report card to the School Board and community on academic achievement. Part 1 of the report provides a summary of performance across the entire district on a variety of indicators of achievement. It includes an overview of district performance and an examination of…
How State Takeover School Districts Shake Up Teacher Professional Development
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Pennington, Kaitlin
2014-01-01
Over the past few decades, many state departments of education have taken over low-performing schools or districts as a school turnaround strategy. Recently, that strategy has shifted to creating new districts--managed by the state--that include schools and parts of districts that face challenges in performance. The governance structure brings…
Jung, Sunyoung
2008-01-01
Objectives. We examined the association between county-level estimates of children's health status and school district performance in California. Methods. We used 3 data sources: the California Health Interview Survey, district archives from the California Department of Education, and census-based estimates of county demographic characteristics. We used logistic regression to estimate whether a school district's failure to meet adequate yearly progress goals in 2004 to 2005 was a function of child and adolescent's health status. Models included district- and county-level fixed effects and were adjusted for the clustering of districts within counties. Results. County-level changes in children's and adolescent's health status decreased the likelihood that a school district would fail to meet adequate yearly progress goals during the investigation period. Health status did not moderate the relatively poor performance of predominantly minority districts. Conclusions. We found empirical support that area variation in children's and adolescent's health status exerts a contextual effect on school district performance. Future research should explore the specific mechanisms through which area-level child health influences school and district achievement. PMID:18309137
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Moten, Anthony C.
2015-01-01
This phenomenological narrative study was designed to investigate superintendents' and school board presidents' perception related to the influence of school boards on school district performance. Participants were three superintendents and three school board presidents whose districts were recognized as met standards for the 2014-2015 academic…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Sharp, John
This report provides a performance review of a Texas school district. For the review, investigators interviewed district employees, school-board members, students, parents, business leaders, and representatives from community organizations. The review team also held public forums, conducted focus-group sessions and personal interviews, surveyed…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Council of Chief State School Officers, Washington, DC.
This paper presents proceedings from a 2001 working conference of the State and District Support to Low-Performing Schools initiative, which presented research-based strategies and exemplary practice to improve low-performing schools. The presentations focused on state and district systems of support to low-performing schools; use of data to…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Rice, John; Huang, Min
2015-01-01
Clark County School District (CCSD) asked the Western Regional Education Laboratory (REL West) to examine the relationship between spending per pupil and Nevada School Performance Framework (NSPF) index scores in the district's schools. Data were examined from three school years (2011/12, 2012/13, 2013/14) and for three types of schools…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Anchorage School District, AK.
This profile is the report card of the Anchorage, Alaska, School District on the academic achievement of Anchorage students. Part 1 provides a summary of performance across the entire district on a variety of important indicators of success. Part 2, published separately, profiles each of the district's schools. Part 1 contains an overview of the…
Philadelphia's Renaissance Schools Initiative after Four Years
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Stratos, Kati; Wolford, Tonya; Reitano, Adrienne
2015-01-01
In 2010-2011, the School District of Philadelphia (the District) launched its Renaissance Schools Initiative, a program designed to dramatically improve student achievement in the District's lowest performing schools. Some schools became Promise Academies, based on the federal turnaround model, and remained District-operated neighborhood schools.…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Kakumbi, Zonic; Samuel, Elizabeth B.; Mulendema, Peter J.
2016-01-01
The purpose of this research was to investigate pupil background characteristics and academic performance in senior secondary schools in Kitwe district with a view of recommending on how to improve pupils' performance. The study was conducted in Kitwe district because in the past years pupils' performance in senior secondary schools has been…
Perceptions of the Leadership Practices of Principals in a High Performing School District
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Dinning, Molly
2014-01-01
The dissertation, "Perceptions Of The Leadership Practices Of Principals In A High Performing School District," explores the understandings of leadership practices from the perspective of parents, teachers, and principals in one high performing school district. The study addressed the leadership practices deemed important by the…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Bishop, Janice Zissette
2009-01-01
This case study on the impact of a state takeover in one of South Carolina's most rural school districts ("referred to as the County School District") was completed using a quasi-experimental mixed methods design to examine the impact on academic achievement, school performance, and school leadership as a result of the South Carolina…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Prew, Martin; Quaigrain, Kenneth
2010-01-01
This article looks at a school management tool that allows school managers and education district offices to review the performance of their schools and use the broad-based data to undertake orchestrated planning with districts planning delivery based on the needs of schools and in support of school improvement plans. The review process also…
School District Size and Academic Performance: A Multi-Year Study
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Lenear, Bonnie Clariss
2013-01-01
Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of school district size on the academic performance of Texas students. Specifically addressed was the extent to which differences in school district size were related to differences in student academic performance. The academic performance of the three major ethnic groups (i.e., Black,…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Stuit, David A.
2010-01-01
This study investigates the successes of the charter and district sectors in eliminating bad schools via dramatic turnarounds in performance and/or shutdowns. It identified 2,025 low-performing charter and district schools across ten states, each of which is home to a sizable number of charter schools. These particular schools were tracked from…
No One Way: Differentiating School District Leadership and Support for School Improvement
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Anderson, Stephen E.; Mascall, Blair; Stiegelbauer, Suzanne; Park, Jaddon
2012-01-01
This article examines findings from a qualitative investigation of how school district administrators in four mid to large sized urban school districts (10,000-50,000) identify and address differences in school performance. The analysis explores the interaction between district policies and actions that centralize and standardize expectations for…
Benchmark for Performance: Geothermal Applications in Lincoln Public Schools
DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)
Durfee, D.J.; Hughes, P.J.; Martin, M.A.
1999-06-19
Vertical-bore, geothermal heat pumps (GHPs) have been providing heating and cooling to four new elementary schools located in Lincoln, Nebraska since 1995. According to representatives of the local utility and school district, the systems are providing a comfortable, complaint-free environment with utility costs that are nearly half of that of other schools in the district. Performance data collected from on-site energy management systems and district billing and utility records for all fifty schools in the Lincoln district indicate that only five consume less energy than the best performing GHP school; however these five cool less than 10% of their totalmore » floor area, while the GHP schools cool 100% of their floor area. When compared to other new schools (with similar ventilation loads), the GHP schools used approximately 26% less source energy per square foot of floor area. Variations in annual energy performance are evident among the four GHP schools, however, together they still consume less source energy than 70% of all schools in the district. These variations are most likely due to operational differences rather than installed equipment, building orientation, or environmental (bore field) conditions.« less
Benchmark for performance: Geothermal applications in Lincoln public schools
DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)
Shonder, J.A.; Martin, M.A.; Sharp, T.R.
1999-07-01
Vertical-bore, geothermal heat pumps (GHPs) have been providing heating and cooling to four new elementary schools located in Lincoln, Nebraska since 1995. According to representatives of the local utility and school district, the systems are providing a comfortable, complaint-free environment with utility costs that are nearly half of that of other schools in the district. Performance data collected from on-site energy management systems and district billing and utility records for all fifty schools in the Lincoln district indicate that only five consume less energy than the best performing GHP school; however, these five cool less than 10% of their totalmore » floor area, while the GHP schools cool 100% of their floor area. When compared to other new schools (with similar ventilation loads), the GHP schools used approximately 26% less source energy per square foot of floor area. Variations in annual energy performance are evident amongst the four GHP schools, however, together they still consume less source energy than 70% of all schools in the district. These variations are most likely due to operational differences rather than installed equipment, building orientation, or environmental (bore field) conditions.« less
Stock, Christiane; Bloomfield, Kim; Ejstrud, Bo; Vinther-Larsen, Mathilde; Meijer, Mathias; Grønbæk, Morten; Grittner, Ulrike
2012-06-01
This study sought to determine the influence of individual factors on active transportation to school among Danish seventh graders and whether school district factors are associated with such behaviour independently of individual factors. Mixed effects logistic regression models determined the effects of individual (gender, family affluence, enjoyment of school and academic performance) and school district factors (educational level, household savings, land use and size) on active transportation to school (by foot, bicycle or other active means) among 10 380 pupils aged 13-15 years nested in 407 school districts. Of all students, 64.4% used active transportation to school daily. Boys, those with perceived higher school performance and those with lower family affluence were more likely to use active transportation to school. After adjustment for all individual factors listed above, high household savings at the school district level was associated with higher odds of active transportation to school. As factors of land use, low level of farming land use and high proportion of single houses were associated with active transportation to school. Policies aiming at reducing social inequalities at the school district level may enhance active transportation to school. School districts with farming land use face barriers for active transportation to school, requiring special policy attention.
A Sense of Balance: District Aligns Personalized Learning with School and System Goals
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Donsky, Debbie; Witherow, Kathy
2015-01-01
This article addresses the challenge of personalizing learning while also ensuring alignment with system and school improvement plans. Leaders of the York Region District School Board in Ontario knew that what took their high-performing school district from good to great would not take it from great to excellent. The district's early model of…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Sturgis, Chris
2016-01-01
This paper explores how an Alaskan school district shifted from a traditional K-12 education system to a personalized, performance-based system, embedded in the culture of the community, which led to increased student achievement. Chugach School District (CSD) first implemented competency education over twenty years ago, paving the way in…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
New York State Education Dept., Albany. Bureau of School Programs Evaluation.
The Performance Indicators in Education program is designed to develop methods of measuring the performance in reading and arithmetic achievement at the elementary school level of the schools of New York State. From data on file at the State Education Department, a set of profiles was developed for each of 628 school districts indicating how the…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Dyson, Dana D.
2009-01-01
Reforms in American public education have not resolved the wide academic performance gap between students attending schools in poor, large, urban centers versus schools in wealthier areas. Aggregate performance outcomes on state achievement tests reveal that some school districts consistently outperform others, a few fluctuate over time but are…
Anchorage School District Profile of Performance 1996-97. Assessment and Evaluation Report #97-3.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Fenton, Ray
This report focuses on student achievement across the Anchorage (Alaska) school district and within its individual programs. It does not include information on the social and physical wellness of the district's students. The first section of the report provides an overview of district performance on critical achievement indicators, and the second…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Pan, Diane; Rudo, Zena H.; Schneider, Cynthia L.; Smith-Hansen, Lotte
This document reports on a study on the relationship between resources and student performance. The study examined district-level patterns of resource allocation, district and school resource practices implemented to improve student performance, and barriers and challenges to efficient resource allocation faced by districts and schools. The study…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
What Works Clearinghouse, 2008
2008-01-01
The study examined whether charter schools have higher growth in student achievement than traditional public schools. The study analyzed data on 79 charter schools and 593 traditional public elementary, middle, and high schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District from 2005-06 to 2006-07. School-level academic achievement was measured using…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Ansingh, Pamela Jean
2012-01-01
How prepared are central office administrators to lead school districts in the face of changing standards and changing student populations? The purpose of this mixed methods study was to examine the responses of central office administrators in the top 5% performing school districts in Washington State with the goal of identifying common attitudes…
ResourceCheck: Assess Your District's Resource Use
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Education Resource Strategies, 2013
2013-01-01
For over a decade, Education Resource Strategies, Inc. (ERS) has helped leaders of urban school districts strategically reallocate their resources to improve student performance. This work identifies seven Core Transformational Strategies that support high-performing schools; in high-functioning districts, resources (people, time, and money) are…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Welsch, David M.; Zimmer, David M.
2012-01-01
This paper examines the competitive effects of a unique school choice program implemented in the late 1990s, Wisconsin's open enrollment program, which allows families to send their children to schools outside their home district. In contrast to other school choice programs, districts not only face negative consequences from losing students and…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Marsh, Julie A.; Strunk, Katharine O.; Bush, Susan
2013-01-01
Purpose: Despite the popularity of school "turnaround" and "portfolio district" management as solutions to low performance, there has been limited research on these strategies. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap by exploring the strategic case of Los Angeles Unified School District's Public School Choice…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Strunk, Katharine O.; Marsh, Julie A.; Hashim, Ayesha K.; Bush-Mecenas, Susan; Weinstein, Tracey
2016-01-01
We examine the Los Angeles Unified School District's Public School Choice Initiative (PSCI), which sought to turnaround the district's lowest-performing schools. We ask whether school turnaround impacted student outcomes, and what explains variations in outcomes across reform cohorts. We use a Comparative Interrupted Time Series approach using…
Creating a High-Performance School System.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Thompson, Scott
2003-01-01
Describes several critical factors of a high-performing school system such as the system holds itself accountable for the success of all its schools. Provides school district examples of critical success factors in action. Includes districts in Colorado, Washington, Texas, California, New Jersey. Discusses the role of strategic and authentic…
Strategic Involuntary Teacher Transfers and Teacher Performance: Examining Equity and Efficiency
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Grissom, Jason A.; Loeb, Susanna; Nakashima, Nathaniel A.
2014-01-01
Despite claims that school districts need flexibility in teacher assignment to allocate teachers more equitably across schools and improve district performance, the power to involuntarily transfer teachers across schools remains hotly contested. Little research has examined involuntary teacher transfer policies or their effects on schools,…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Jordan, Brian C.
2012-01-01
Information gained from the present study should provide important policy insights into whether adjustments to the School District Finance and Quality Performance Accreditation (SDFQPA) Act funding formula have supported the original goal behind SDFQPA, which was to provide more equal funding to public elementary and secondary pupils in Kansas.…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Jordan, Brian C.
2012-01-01
Information gained from the present study should provide important policy insights into whether adjustments to the School District Finance and Quality Performance Accreditation (SDFQPA) Act funding formula have supported the original goal behind SDFQPA, which was to provide more equal funding to public elementary and secondary pupils in Kansas.…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Mlangeni, Angstone Noel J. Thembachako; Chiotha, Sosten Staphael
2015-01-01
A study was conducted to investigate factors that affect students' poor performance in physical science examinations at Malawi School Certificate of Education and Junior Certificate of Education levels in Community day secondary schools (CDSS) in Lilongwe Rural West Education District in Malawi. Students' performance was collected from schools'…
Educational Equity in Alabama: What We Learned from Report Card 2000. Research Brief.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Miller-Whitehead, Marie
This study examined Alabama State Education Report Card indicators for the year 2000 to identify predictors of student academic achievement at both the district and school levels for 128 public city and county school systems and 1,272 Alabama public schools. School district performance grade and school performance grade as provided on the Alabama…
Making Good Choices: Districts Take the Lead. Comprehensive School Reform.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
North Central Regional Educational Lab., Oak Brook, IL.
Public schools across the country are aiming to improve student performance by engaging in comprehensive school reform (CSR). This guide was created to help school districts make CSR an integral part of their strategies for improving student achievement. Five components for CSR are described: (1) Strategizing, whereby the district supports CSR by…
Review of "The Louisiana Recovery School District: Lessons for the Buckeye State"
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Buras, Kristen L.
2012-01-01
In "The Louisiana Recovery School District: Lessons for the Buckeye State," the Thomas B. Fordham Institute criticizes local urban governance structures and presents the decentralized, charter-school-driven Recovery School District (RSD) in New Orleans as a successful model for fiscal and academic performance. Absent from the review is…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Kelly, Christopher
2016-01-01
The purpose of this study was to examine the efforts of school districts in developing and sustaining their capacity to improve student achievement in response to increased accountability. The study sought to confirm what the research says regarding the role of the school district in influencing school improvement. While there is a significant…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Wheatley, Vicki Ann
2012-01-01
The relationship between components of the local school district report card, school district typology, and the outcome of public school tax levy requests were examined in this study. A correlation research design was used to measure the relationship between the independent variables (performance index, average yearly progress, value added,…
Classroom, School, and District Impacts on Diverse Student Literacy Achievement
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Wilcox, Kristen Campbell; Lawson, Hal A.; Angelis, Janet
2015-01-01
Background/Context: Prior research has investigated the literacy achievement gap with particular focus on ethnically and linguistically diverse students' performance. This study extends that research by examining the relationships among classroom instructional practices, school priorities, and district policies in higher performing schools.…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Abode, Philip Sanmi
2005-01-01
The purpose of this study was to understand the nature of the relationship between organizational strategy and district performance among California's largest unified school districts. Organizational strategy was measured using planned and realized strategies (independent variables). Realized strategy is also referred to strategic orientation.…
Bringing School Reform to Scale: Five Award-Winning Urban Districts. Educational Innovations
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Zavadsky, Heather
2009-01-01
"Bringing School Reform to Scale" looks in detail at five school districts that have been honored in recent years by The Broad Foundation, whose annual award is granted "each year to the urban school districts that demonstrate the greatest overall performance and improvement in student achievement while reducing achievement gaps among poor and…
Board Members, the Public, and Fiscal Welfare of School Districts.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Vincent, William S.
1967-01-01
The ways in which the following three factors influence a large-city school district's "fiscal performance" are investigated: (1) The educational and occupational status of school board members, (2) the effect of public vote on the budget, and (3) the effect of the size of the school district. A regression of certain budget approval variables,…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Honig, Meredith I.; Rainey, Lydia R.
2015-01-01
School district leaders nationwide aspire to help their schools become vibrant places for learning--where students have meaningful academic opportunities and develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Historically, though, school district central offices have been ill-equipped to support such ambitious goals. A new wave of research…
Redefining the School District in Michigan. Part Two of a Three-Part Series
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Smith, Nelson
2014-01-01
What happens when policymakers create statewide school districts to turn around their worst-performing public schools? In Louisiana and Tennessee, Recovery School Districts (RSDs) have made modest-to-strong progress for kids and serve as national models for what the future of education governance might hold. In the Great Lakes State, the story is…
Staffing a Low-Performing School: Behavioral Responses to Selective Teacher Transfer Incentives
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Protik, Ali; Glazerman, Steven; Bruch, Julie; Teh, Bing-ru
2015-01-01
We examine behavioral responses to an incentive program that offers high-performing teachers in ten school districts across the country $20,000 to transfer into the district's hardest-to-staff schools. We discuss behavioral responses to the program on high-performing teachers' willingness to transfer (supply) and the effect of the transfer offer…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Bowers, Michele Marie
2011-01-01
This study examined elementary student literacy performance in Lancaster School District in kindergarten through 5th grades for 6 elementary schools implementing the Reading First program and 6 elementary schools not implementing Reading First. Subgroup data for English Language Learners, Hispanic, and African American students was closely…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Dougherty, Chrys; Shaw, Teresa
2016-01-01
This report looks at student achievement levels in Arkansas school districts disaggregated by district poverty and by the district's performance relative to other districts. We estimated district performance statistics by subject and grade level (4, 8, and 11-12) for longitudinal student cohorts, using statistical models that adjusted for district…
Managing School Districts for High Performance: Cases in Public Education Leadership
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Childress, Stacey, Ed.; Elmore, Richard F., Ed.; Grossman, Allen, Ed.; Johnson, Susan Moore, Ed.
2007-01-01
"Managing School Districts for High Performance" brings together more than twenty case studies and other readings that offer a powerful and transformative approach to advancing and sustaining the work of school improvement. At the center of this work is the concept of organizational coherence: aligning organizational design, human…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Taylor, Rosemarye T.; Pelletier, Kelly; Trimble, Todd; Ruiz, Eddie
2014-01-01
The purpose of these three parallel mixed method studies was to measure the effectiveness of an urban school district's 2011 Preparing New Principals Program (PNPP). Results supported the premise that preparing principals for school leadership in 2013 must develop them as instructional leaders who can improve teacher performance and student…
Kentucky's Program for Educationally Deficient School Districts: A Case Study.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Fry, Patricia; And Others
The development and implementation of Kentucky's Program for Educationally Deficient School Districts is examined in this case study. Implemented in 1987, the program required districts to meet certain performance, planning, and reporting criteria. Districts failing to comply could be placed in categories of noncompliance. Data were derived from…
Cognitively Guided Instruction: An Implementation Case Study of a High Performing School District
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Dowdy, William D. B.
2011-01-01
No Child Left Behind legislation developed goals for every student to be proficient in each academic subject by 2014. California's students are far from meeting this goal, especially in mathematics. One Southern Californian school district, renamed Green Valley Unified School District for anonymity, began using Cognitively Guided Instruction…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Abraham, Nath. M.; Ememe, Ogbonna N.
2012-01-01
This study investigates Effective School-Community Relations as a key Performance Indicator (KPI) of Secondary Schools Administrator in Aba South District, Nigeria. Descriptive survey method was adopted. All the 248 teachers made up the population and sample in a purposive sampling technique representing 100% of the entire population as sample. A…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Benson, Kayiwa
2011-01-01
The purpose of the study was to establish the relationship between leadership training of head teachers and school performance in secondary schools in Mubende district, Uganda. Descriptive-correlational research design was used. Six schools out of 32 were selected and the sample size of head teachers, teachers and students leaders was 287 out of…
Successful School Turnarounds: Seven Steps for District Leaders. Issue Brief
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Kowal, Julie; Hassel, Emily Ayscue; Hassel, Bryan C.
2009-01-01
President Obama and Secretary Duncan have called upon states, districts, and education leaders to change the lives of millions of children by dramatically improving the nation's 5,000 lowest performing schools. These chronically failing schools will require intensive intervention to turn around performance that has fallen short of expectations for…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Reimer, Catherine Nicole
2010-01-01
This research study investigated the leadership behaviors and organizational frames utilized by two veteran superintendents of medium sized school districts in California to address issues of academic performance in their respective districts as perceived by the superintendents and their respective board members and principals. Current…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Mabula, Salyungu
2015-01-01
This study investigated the performance of secondary school students in Mathematics at the Selected Secondary Schools in Mtwara Municipality and Ilemela District by Absenteeism, Conduct, Type of School and Gender as explanatory Factors. The data used in the study was collected from documented records of 250 form three students with 1:1 gender…
Strategies for Passing School Bond Elections
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Adams, Christy Harris
2017-01-01
Inadequate, deteriorating, old school buildings and facilities are a major concern in many school districts across the country. Studies have determined that students perform better and learn more in newer, cleaner facilities. For school districts to be able to afford new constructions or renovations, school bonds are often necessary. There are…
Making the Grade in America's Cities: Assessing Student Achievement in Urban Districts
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Blagg, Kristin
2016-01-01
Many US education reform efforts focus on student performance in large, urban school districts. The National Assessment of Educational Progress's Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) program provides data on student achievement in these districts, but differences in student characteristics complicate comparisons of district performance. I use…
Computerized Fleet Maintenance.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Cataldo, John J.
The computerization of school bus maintenance records by the Niskayuna (New York) Central School District enabled the district's transportation department to engage in management practices resulting in significant savings. The district obtains computer analyses of the work performed on all vehicles, including time spent, parts, labor, costs,…
Implementing the No Child Left Behind Act: Challenges for the States
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Goertz, Margaret E.
2005-01-01
The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) requires states to test specified subjects and grades, to establish minimum performance standards for students, schools and school districts, and to provide assistance and impose sanctions on schools and districts that do not meet performance goals as a condition of receiving federal aid. NCLB builds on…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Hall, G. R.; And Others
Visits in the Spring of 1972 to five school districts (Norfolk, Virginia; Texarkana, Arkansas; Gary, Indiana; Gilroy, California; and Grand Rapids, Michigan) that had implemented educational performance contracting programs during the 1970-71 school year are reported. Changes in the content and methods of instruction, measurement and evaluation,…
A Qualitative Multi-Site Case Study: Examining Principals' Leadership Styles and School Performance
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Preyear, Loukisha
2015-01-01
The purpose of this qualitative multi-site case study was to explore the impact of principals' leadership styles on student academic achievement in a high-poverty low-performing school district in Louisiana. A total of 17 participants, principals and teachers, from this school district were used in this study. Data source triangulation of…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Mass Insight Education (NJ1), 2011
2011-01-01
The District Self-Assessment Tool is designed to support districts, unions and Lead Partners, when analyzing their existing collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the intention of making targeted modifications to support the implementation of dramatic reform in the district's lowest-performing schools. By outlining objectives and suggested…
Turner, Lindsey; Chriqui, Jamie F; Chaloupka, Frank J
2012-09-01
The use of food as a reward for good student behavior or academic performance is discouraged by many national organizations, yet this practice continues to occur in schools. Our multiyear cross-sectional study examined the use of food as a reward in elementary schools and evaluated the association between district policies and school practices. School data were gathered during the 2007-2008, 2008-2009, and 2009-2010 school years via mail-back surveys (N=2,069) from respondents at nationally representative samples of US public elementary schools (1,525 unique schools, 544 of which also participated for a second year). During every year, the corresponding district policy for each school was gathered and coded for provisions pertaining to the use of food as a reward. School practices did not change over time and as of the 2009-2010 school year, respondents in 42.1% and 40.7% of schools, respectively, indicated that food was not used as a reward for academic performance or for good student behavior. In multivariate logistic regression analyses controlling for school characteristics and year, having a district policy that prohibited the use of food as a reward was significantly associated with school respondents reporting that food was not used as a reward for academic performance (P<0.05) or for good student behavior (P<0.05). School-level respondents in the West and the Midwest were less likely to report that food was not used as a reward than were respondents in the South and Northeast. As of 2009-2010, only 11.9% of the districts in our study prohibited the use of food as a reward. Strengthening district policies may reduce the use of food rewards in elementary schools. Copyright © 2012 Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Smith, Rich; Johnson, Marcus; Thompson, Karen D.
2012-01-01
A low-performing California school district experienced a dramatic turnaround when faculty members began studying student assessment data and working together to ensure students had the support they needed. Sanger Unified School District began its reform journey in 2004 when district leaders launched an effort to focus deliberately on student…
States Train Sights on School Districts for Interventions
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Olson, Lynn
2004-01-01
After years of trying to fix trouble schools one at a time, a number of states are weighing stronger measures for intervening in low-performing school districts. The shift is seen as a response to the federal No Child Left Behind Act. States are turning in a bigger way to district-level strategies, in part because as their own accountability…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Stuart, Lindsey; Hahnel, Carrie
2011-01-01
In this report, The Education Trust-West grades the 146 largest unified school districts in California on four key indicators of student performance to see how well they are serving their African-American, Latino, and low-income students. While most districts in California earn Cs and Ds on these indicators, some districts prove that more is…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Alobiedat, Ahmad
2011-01-01
This study aimed to detect the level of appreciation by the school principals, teachers and the Education District, for the effectiveness of school performance, within different variables of the study from the perspective of public school principals and teachers of Al-Petra province, for the academic year 2008/2009. The study aimed to answer the…
School and District Intervention: A Decision-Making Framework for Policymakers.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Bowles, Susan A.; Churchill, Andrew M.; Effrat, Andrew; McDermott, Kathryn A.
This paper seeks to help state policymakers understand their relatively new role in improving the academic performance of local schools and districts. The first section, "Intervention Decision-Making Framework," focuses on the intervention decision making framework model, performance criteria, strategic criteria, diagnostic…
City Districts Embracing K-8 Schools
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Gewertz, Catherine
2004-01-01
This article deals with school districts' K-8 configurations. Cincinnati, Cleveland, Milwaukee, New York, and Philadelphia are among the districts making the change, driven by a small body of research and a rising pile of anecdotes suggesting that K-8 configurations help academic performance, decrease discipline problems, enhance parent…
Comprehensive District Reform: Philadelphia's Grand Experiment.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Useem, Elizabeth; Balfanz, Robert
2002-01-01
This report describes "Philadelphia's Grand Experiment" in comprehensive school district reform, from its conception through its initial months of implementation. In 2001, as part of the remedy for low student performance, the governor ordered the state to take over governance of the Philadelphia School District, with a substantial…
Performance Evaluation and Compensation for Public School Principals: Results from a National Survey
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Kimball, Steven M.; Heneman, Herbert G., III; Milanowski, Anthony
2007-01-01
This article reports on a national survey designed to learn how medium and large school districts are using standards-based leadership evaluation and related human resource management practices, such as pay for performance. Surveys were sent to all school districts in the United States with student populations 10,000 and over (total n=867).…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
EL-Amin, Abdul
2013-01-01
This descriptive research study was conducted to determine the state of perceived teacher morale and student academic performance as measured by fourth-grade reading and math scores among four elementary schools defined by the servant leadership score of each principal in this Florida elementary school district. While related research from other…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Knowles, Paul D.
2010-01-01
Frustrated with years of below-average performance on standardized tests, high dropout rates and a negative image of its schools, the board of education in Maine School Administrative District 11, a 2,200-student school district in central Maine, charged a 15-member committee of educators, school board members and community representatives to…
The Rise of Networks: How Decentralized Management Is Improving Schools
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Kelleher, Maureen
2014-01-01
School districts across the country are shifting away from their traditional management paradigm--a central office that directs its schools through uniform mandates and policies--toward a new vision where district leaders support autonomous schools while holding them accountable for student performance. The advent of new governance mechanisms…
CA District Uses RTI to Boost Achievement for All
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Samuels, Christina A.
2011-01-01
The 2004-05 school year didn't start off well for the Sanger Unified School District. The district, located east of Fresno, had entered its first year of "program improvement"--a gentler way of saying that Sanger was among the 98 lowest-performing districts in the state based on success criteria in the No Child Left Behind law. The…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Reeder, Brian
2004-01-01
Standard & Poors (S&P) uses a measure they call a Performance Cost Index (PCI) as their measure of a school or district?s ?Return on Resources?. The Performance Cost Index is defined as the average cost per measured ?unit? of student performance. In its simplest form, the Performance Cost Index is calculated as per student expenditures divided by…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Dessoff, Alan
2010-01-01
Like other districts with schools that are not meeting adequate yearly progress (AYP) goals for five consecutive years, Hawaii is restructuring its low performing schools as required by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law. Unlike most other districts, however, Hawaii, a single statewide district, has been doing it for five years with the support…
No Time to Lose: Turnaround Leader Performance Assessment
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Rhim, Lauren Morando
2012-01-01
Effective leadership is critical to successful school turnaround efforts. Yet, district leaders have historically been hesitant to hold leaders accountable for bold change efforts. As federal and state dollars flow to districts and individual schools charged with embarking upon transformative change efforts, districts must adopt a laser-sharp…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Schwartz, Amy Ellen; Stiefel, Leanna; Wiswall, Matthew
2012-01-01
We evaluate the effectiveness of small high school reform in the country's largest school district, New York City. Using a rich administrative dataset for multiple cohorts of students and distance between student residence and school to instrument for endogenous school selection, we find substantial heterogeneity in school effects: newly created…
In-Depth Portfolio Assessment: Shelby County Schools, Memphis, Tennessee
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Campbell, Christine; Binder, Libuse
2014-01-01
The 2013 merger of Memphis City Schools (with 103,000 students) and Shelby County Schools (with 47,000 students) was the largest school district consolidation in American history. In its first year of operation, the new Shelby County Schools (SCS) commissioned CRPE researchers to perform a critical review of the district's readiness to implement a…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Ramirez, Heidi A.; Schofield, Lynne Steuerle; Black, Melissa
2009-01-01
The School District of Philadelphia (SDP), like many other urban school districts, struggles to increase its hiring and retention of experienced and highly qualified teachers in its low-performing/high-need schools. Toward the goal of improving teacher quality and the experience balance, particularly in hard-to-staff schools, the Philadelphia…
Apples to Apples: Common School Performance Frameworks as a Tool for Choice and Accountability
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Yatsko, Sarah; Opalka, Alice; Sutter, Jessica; Weeldreyer, Laura; Stewart, David
2016-01-01
Many districts are expanding and diversifying the school options available to parents--a trend that shows no signs of reversing. While all public schools are required to test and publically report results, it remains nearly impossible for families and education and civic leaders to make school-to-school comparisons, especially across district-run…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Akoma, Ahunna Margaux
2012-01-01
This case study of one school district examined how school leaders use student performance data and technology-based data analysis tools to engage in data-informed decision-making for continuous improvement. School leaders in this context included leaders at the district, school, and classroom levels. An extensive literature review provided the…
Institutionalizing Sex Education in Diverse U.S. School Districts.
Saul Butler, Rebekah; Sorace, Danene; Hentz Beach, Kathleen
2018-02-01
This paper describes the Working to Institutionalize Sex Education (WISE) Initiative, a privately funded effort to support ready public school districts to advance and sustain comprehensive sexuality programs, and examines the degree to which WISE has been successful in increasing access to sex education, removing barriers, and highlighting best practices. The data for this study come from a set of performance indicators, guidance documents, and tools designed for the WISE Initiative to capture changes in sex education institutionalization at WISE school districts. The evaluation includes the analysis of 186 school districts across 12 states in the U.S. As a result of the WISE Initiative, 788,865 unique students received new or enhanced sex education in school classrooms and 88 school districts reached their sex education institutionalization goals. In addition to these school district successes, WISE codified the WISE Method and toolkit-a practical guide to help schools implement sex education. Barriers to implementing sexuality education can be overcome with administrative support and focused technical assistance and training, resulting in significant student reach in diverse school districts nationwide. Copyright © 2017 The Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Leadership Development: A Lever for System-Wide Educational Change
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Naicker, Suraiya R.; Mestry, Raj
2016-01-01
The continuous poor performance of South Africa's learners is detrimental to its developing economy. The need for education change prompted two universities to initiate a system-wide change strategy in a poorly performing school district. The leverage for change was leadership development, involving school principals and district officials. The…
Improving Student Academic Performance through Antibias Education
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Harte-Weiner, Philene
2013-01-01
The quantitative study contained herein was conducted to determine if there is a relationship between antibias education (ABE) and student performance on state standardized tests in a South Florida school district. In many districts, raising test scores has become priority with some schools even changing their curriculum so that teachers teach…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Bowers, Alex J.
2015-01-01
School districts in the USA are an active area of study in education research as findings have shown that some districts find success in certain contexts while others struggle. However, the research domain has had few actionable methods for site selection for in-depth qualitative studies. This study analyses all districts in the state of Ohio (n =…
Best Teachers in Bad Schools Win without NCLB Funding
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Chmelynski, Carol
2004-01-01
To lure highly qualified teachers to low-performing schools, the Mobile County, Alabama, school board did what a small but growing number of districts are considering: pay teachers more money for working in what are considered less attractive jobs. As school districts are more pressured to raise achievement among all student groups, more are…
Transformation or Decline? Using Tough Times to Create Higher-Performing Schools
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Miles, Karen Hawley
2011-01-01
Instead of doing less with less during these fiscally challenging times, school districts can seize the moment to usher in school transformation that will leave the schools, families, and communities better off. They could follow the lead of districts such as Baltimore City, Syracuse, and Charlotte-Mecklenburg to think outside traditional cost…
Guide to Financing EnergySmart Schools
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
US Department of Energy, 2010
2010-01-01
By making a commitment to high-performance schools, many school districts are discovering that smart energy choices can have lasting benefits for their students, their communities, and the environment. An energy-efficient school district with 4,000 students could save as much as $160,000 a year in energy costs. Over 10 years, those savings can…
Debates over School Shutdowns Heating Up
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Zubrzycki, Jaclyn
2012-01-01
As school closures are increasingly used as a remedy to budget woes and a solution to failing schools in many cities, debates are intensifying about their effect on student performance and well-being, on district finances, and on communities and the processes districts use to choose which schools will be shuttered. Student and parent groups in…
A Research Brief: "Principals' Hiring of Teachers in Philadelphia"
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Ramirez, Heidi A.; Schofield, Lynne Steuerle; Black, Melissa
2008-01-01
The School District of Philadelphia (SDP), like many other urban school districts, struggles to increase its hiring and retention of experienced and highly qualified teachers in its low-performing/high-need schools. Excluding its charter schools, SDP serves approximately 165,000 students, largely from high-poverty (76%) and minority (85%)…
The Influence of Student Achievement on Teacher Turnover
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Falch, Torberg; Ronning, Marte
2007-01-01
Evidence on teacher behavior is essential for the understanding of the performance of school systems. In this paper we utilize rich data to study the teachers' quit decision in Norway. We distinguish between decisions to move between public schools within school districts, to another school district in the same labor market region, across labor…
Denver Expands Choice and Charters
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Osborne, David
2016-01-01
Some of the most dramatic gains in urban education have come from school districts using what is known as a "portfolio strategy." Under this approach, districts negotiate performance agreements with public schools--traditional, charter, and hybrid models. The arrangement affords school leaders substantial autonomy to handcraft their…
The Influence of Reduction in Force on Educators in One Texas School District
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Oge, Debra Reviere
2015-01-01
The purpose of this phenomenological narrative study was to explore influences of a reduction in force (RIF) on educators in one Texas school district. The four questions that guided the research examined the relationships, job performance, supportive action and suggestions for improvement for districts contemplating a reduction in force. Nine…
Teachers under Duress: Some Effects of Declining Enrollment and District Staffing Policies.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Phelan, William T.
A questionnaire survey of 1,506 teachers in 89 elementary and secondary schools in eastern Massachusetts examined teachers' reactions to declining enrollments and school district retrenchment policies. The hypotheses tested suggest that, in districts whose reduction-in-force (RIF) policies include performance evaluations as well as seniority as…
Does Small High School Reform Lift Urban Districts? Evidence from New York City
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Stiefel, Leanna; Schwartz, Amy Ellen; Wiswall, Matthew
2015-01-01
Research finds that small high schools deliver better outcomes than large high schools for urban students. An important outstanding question is whether this better performance is gained at the expense of losses elsewhere: Does small school reform lift the whole district? We explore New York City's small high school reform in which hundreds of new…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Blazer, Christie
2011-01-01
An increasing number of states and school districts across the country are tying teacher pay to student performance. A recent RAND Education study found that nationwide spending on teacher performance pay increased from $99 million in 2006 to $439 million in 2010. However, many states and school districts face significant hurdles when they attempt…
Competition with Charters Motivates Districts
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Holley, Marc J.; Lueken, Martin F.; Egalite, Anna J.
2013-01-01
Proponents of market-based education reform often argue that introducing charter schools and other school choice policies creates a competitive dynamic that will prompt low-performing districts to improve their practice. Rather than simply providing an alternative to neighborhood public schools for a handful of students, the theory says, school…
Carpet Aids Learning in High Performance Schools
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Hurd, Frank
2009-01-01
The Healthy and High Performance Schools Act of 2002 has set specific federal guidelines for school design, and developed a federal/state partnership program to assist local districts in their school planning. According to the Collaborative for High Performance Schools (CHPS), high-performance schools are, among other things, healthy, comfortable,…
School District Leave Policies, Teacher Absenteeism, and Student Achievement.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Ehrenberg, Ronald G.; And Others
1991-01-01
Econometric analysis of data from over 700 New York state school districts found that (1) policies governing use of teacher leave days clearly influence their use; (2) higher student absenteeism correlated with poorer test performance; and (3) teacher absence was not largely associated with student test performance. Changes in leave policy were…
The Best Laid Plans: Pay for Performance Incentive Programs for School Leaders
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Goff, Peter; Goldring, Ellen; Canney, Melissa
2016-01-01
In an era of heightened accountability and limited fiscal resources, school districts have sought novel ways to increase the effectiveness of their principals in an effort to increase student proficiency. To address these needs, some districts have turned to pay-for-performance programs, aligning leadership goals with financial incentives to…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Hassel, Bryan C.; Doyle, Daniela
2010-01-01
Despite the growing role of nontraditional providers and school operators, many school districts remain reticent, if not resolutely opposed, to turning over schools or even school functions like human resources to outside providers. Limiting the use of nontraditional providers, especially those with demonstrated effectiveness, hampers a district's…
Snapshot of SIG: A Look at Four States' Approaches to School Turnaround
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Quillin, Jessica
2012-01-01
Thousands of schools across the country are chronically low performing, and they operate within districts and states that are struggling to help them improve. The School Improvement Grants (SIG) program is designed to channel federal funds to states and districts facing the task of turning around struggling schools. SIG, a part of the Elementary…
Kansas School Expenditures 1998-99 through 2014-15: Trends and Details. Research Reports
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Kansas Association of School Boards, 2016
2016-01-01
This report examines the Kansas school district expenditure data provided by the Kansas State Department of Education on (KSDE) through its Comparative Performance & Fiscal System (CPFS--http:// cpfs.ksde.org/), which includes all school district expenditures reported by Fund, Object, and Sub Object from the 1998-99 school year through the…
School Start Time Change: An In-Depth Examination of School Districts in the United States
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Owens, Judith; Drobnich, Darrel; Baylor, Allison; Lewin, Daniel
2014-01-01
In response to the scientific evidence documenting both profound developmental changes in sleep and circadian biology during adolescence and the myriad of negative health, performance, and safety outcomes risks associated with chronic sleep loss, at least 70 public school districts in the United States, representing approximately 1,000 schools,…
Preparing Non-Educators for the Superintendency
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Quinn, Tim
2007-01-01
It takes strong leadership skills to successfully run an entity as large and complex as an urban school district, much less turn around one that is low-performing. Most people don't realize that many urban school systems are as large as the biggest companies in America. Yet, most school district leaders and school board members have no specific…
Food for Thought: Expanding School Breakfast to NJ Students. [Updated
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Advocates for Children of New Jersey, 2014
2014-01-01
Often, school districts are reluctant to adopt innovative approaches to serving children breakfast in school because of logistical concerns that are easily overcome. Districts that adopt these more innovative approaches report significant increases in participation rates and improvement in student behavior and performance. This report provides…
School and Public Library Collaboration
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Vincellete, Pete; Queen, Priscilla
2012-01-01
More than 60,000 students attend over seventy schools comprising the Douglas County School District (DCSD) in Colorado. It has been a consistently high-performing district, with a reputation for being among Colorado's elite. Douglas County Libraries (DCL) is a nationally recognized state-of-the-art public library system with seven branches serving…
Measuring Competition: Inconsistent Definitions, Inconsistent Results
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Linick, Matthew Allen
2014-01-01
There is a developing literature examining how charter schools, through the effects of competition, impact performance in public school districts and district-run public schools, also known as the second-level effects of competition. What follows is an examination of how competition is measured in this literature that offers a critique of existing…
School Site Strategic Planning To Improve District Performance.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Lytle, James H.
This paper describes the evolution of a school-based planning model that accommodates independent approaches to School District of Philadelphia goals. The description centers on key strategic planning decisions made during a 6-year period and three components of the planning model: the organizational monitoring and feedback system; organizational…
Not Watching the Fight: Examining the Dynamics of School Turnaround
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Corrales, Antonio
2017-01-01
This case describes how a newly appointed superintendent implemented systematic changes across the school district to increase academic performance and keep schools open and operational. The district superintendent and leadership team were forced by the state educational system to promote rapid and drastic organizational and academic changes to…
This report documents the activities performed and the results obtained from the arsenic removal treatment technology demonstration project at the Webb Consolidated Independent School District (Webb CISD) in Bruni, TX. The main objective of the project was to evaluate the effect...
The Board of Trustees' Professional Development and Effects on Student Achievement
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Korelich, Kathryn; Maxwell, Gerri
2015-01-01
With the pressure for school districts to perform well on state assessments (Brown, Jones & Scheunermann, 2012) and the school boards blamed for the problems within a school district (Fridley, 2006), the inquiry of how to increase student achievement continues to be a forerunner in the circles of educators, parents, business and community…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Lindjord, Denise
2002-01-01
Argues that recent federal education legislation will not eliminate unequal funding, school performance inequities, and student achievement gaps that have persisted in the poorest school districts. Asserts that adequate, equitable, and targeted human and financial resources and standards are necessary, and that the slight increases in federal…
The Abbott Districts in 2005-06: Progress and Challenges, Spring 2006
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Hirsch, Lesley
2006-01-01
New Jersey's urban--or "Abbott"--schools have improved at the preschool and elementary school level, but lag when it comes to middle and high school performance. These are the key findings of an Abbott Indicators Project report entitled, "The Abbott Districts in 2005-06: Progress and Challenges." The report was prepared by…
In Health-Related Tasks, Where Does the School Nurse Function?
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Berg, Beryl; And Others
1973-01-01
The study provided a composite picture of health-related tasks performed in one school district. Nurses were able to evaluate their current practices and recommend specific improvements in nursing actions. Other school districts seeking a profile of their involvement in health-related tasks may request copies of the questionnaire or the entire…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Doyle, Daniela; Field, Tim
2013-01-01
Charter school boards enter into a critical bargain: autonomy for accountability. Compared with their traditional district counterparts, they operate with relative freedom in curriculum, hiring, budgeting, and other operational decisions. In exchange, they are held accountable for student performance in ways that traditional district schools are…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Rippe, Jeffrey K.
2012-01-01
The results of this study suggest that there were no significant differences in the academic performance of military dependents' with low (n = 20), moderate (n = 20), and high (n = 20) mobility school district transfer rates compared to non-military control students (n = 20) before completing high school. The findings were not consistent with…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Legg, David E.
2013-01-01
The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between student performance on Reading Curriculum-based Measures (R-CBM) and student performance on the Alaska's standards based assessment (SBA) administered to students in Studied School District (SSD) Grade 3 through Grade 5 students in the Studied School District as required by…
Flay, B R; Allred, C G; Ordway, N
2001-06-01
This paper reports on the effectiveness of an integrated comprehensive school model for character development, problem behavior prevention, and academic achievement enhancement. The Positive Action program consists of a school curriculum, together with schoolwide climate, family, and community components. As evaluated here, the yearly K-6 curriculum consists of over 140 fifteen-to-twenty-minute lessons per year delivered in school classrooms on an almost daily basis. The program is based on theories of self-concept, learning, behavior, and school ecology. We use a matched control design and school-level achievement and disciplinary data to evaluate program effects on student performance and behavior in two separate school districts. The program improved achievement by 16% in one district and 52% in another, and reduced disciplinary referrals by 78% in one district and 85% in the other. We discuss implications of these replicated findings for the prevention of substance abuse and violence, the improvement of school performance, and the reform of American schools.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 2010
2010-01-01
This document is the first in a series of guides designed to help school district leaders address one of the toughest challenges in American education: dropout rates of 30 percent nationwide, 50 percent in many big cities, and 60 percent or more in the lowest-performing schools. It describes in abbreviated form how district leaders and…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Edwards, Jane U.; Mauch, Lois; Winkelman, Mark R.
2011-01-01
Background: To support curriculum and policy, a midwest city school district assessed the association of selected categories of nutrition and physical activity (NUTR/PA) behaviors, fitness measures, and body mass index (BMI) with academic performance (AP) for 800 sixth graders. Methods: Students completed an adapted Youth Risk Behavior…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Nevels, Nevels
2012-01-01
The dissertation study reported here describes various policies and strategies used by school districts that impact student performance on the Missouri Algebra 1 End-of- Course (EOC) assessment. Analysis of state testing data, teacher survey data, and interview data were used to describe policies and strategies used by 42 teachers and…
Whose Choice? Student Experiences and Outcomes in the New Orleans School Marketplace. Research Brief
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Adamson, Frank; Cook-Harvey, Channa; Darling-Hammond, Linda
2015-01-01
As charters and other public and private schools of choice have created a new landscape in many urban areas across the country, some districts have adopted the idea of creating "portfolios" of options. Central to the philosophy of a portfolio district is continuous improvement, as lowest-performing schools are transformed or replaced. In…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Bloomberg, Laura; Nathan, Joe; Berman, Ilene
2009-01-01
In communities nationwide, public charter schools are meeting the growing demand for high-quality education opportunities. This is especially true in communities with underperforming public district schools that are not meeting the academic needs of students, including poor and minority students. Forty states and the District of Columbia have laws…
Go Green, Save Green with ENERGY STAR[R
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Hatcher, Caterina
2010-01-01
Did you know that the nation's 17,450 K-12 school districts spend more on energy than on computers and textbooks combined? Energy costs represent a typical school district's second largest operating expense after salaries. Schools that have earned the ENERGY STAR--EPA's mark of superior energy performance--cost 40 cents per square foot less to…
Early Reading Programs in High-Poverty Schools: Emerald Elementary Beats the Odds.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Fisher, Charles; Adler, Martha A.
This report describes the early reading program in Emerald Elementary School, located in a Midwest urban fringe district. From 1996 through 1998, Emerald's students performed well above the district average or near the state average on reading achievement. During this period, the school had at least half of its students eligible for free or…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Cooper, Melissa A.
2012-01-01
School districts are charged with the task of improving standardized test scores and closing the gaps between specific groups of students. Numerous programs, school improvement strategies, changes in instruction and leadership have been implemented to close the gap. Data are becoming more abundant at the state, district, and school levels. Many…
Whose Choice?: Student Experiences and Outcomes in the New Orleans School Marketplace
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Adamson, Frank; Cook-Harvey, Channa; Darling-Hammond, Linda
2015-01-01
As charters and other public and private schools of choice have created a new landscape in many urban areas across the country, some districts have adopted the idea of creating "portfolios" of options. Central to the philosophy of a portfolio district is continuous improvement, as lowest-performing schools are transformed or replaced.…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Talley, Wade Kenneth; Keedy, John L.
2006-01-01
This study identified the enabling conditions related to building instructional capacity created by the councils in three high-performance schools in an urban district. The authors collected the data through observation, interview, and document mining. School-level data were sorted inductively into themes through constant comparative analysis.…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Joiner, Lottie L.
2003-01-01
Department of Defense schools, equivalent to the 23rd largest school district in the country, serve military families on bases here and abroad. Despite the fact that only 40 percent of the students finish the academic year in the same school where they started, 80 percent of the graduates go on to college and minority students perform better that…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Honig, Meredith I.; Rainey, Lydia R.
2015-01-01
School district leaders nationwide aspire to help their schools become vibrant places for learning--where students have meaningful academic opportunities "and" develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills, the ability to communicate effectively, and other deeper learning capacities that are essential to success in later life.…
The High Cost of Leaving: An Analysis of the Cost of Teacher Turnover
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Watlington, Eliah; Shockley, Robert; Guglielmino, Paul; Felsher, Rivka
2010-01-01
The cost of teacher turnover to schools and school districts has only recently been studied. This research reveals that when high-quality teachers leave the classroom, the effect on both student performance and school and district fiscal operations is significant and deleterious. The implications for study in this area include the planning of…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Chaprnka, Danielle L.
2012-01-01
The intent of Title I of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 is to ensure that all students, regardless of their socioeconomic status, are provided a fair and equitable opportunity to meet challenging academic performance standards. Given such, Title I legislation provides for federal funding to be administered to school districts and schools…
The Power of a Good Idea: How the San Francisco School District Is Building a PreK-3rd Grade Bridge
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Nyhan, Paul
2015-01-01
In 2008 the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) confronted a problem that has been growing for decades. It boasted the highest academic performance of any large urban district in California, yet its achievement gap was widening, as too many African American, Latino, and low-income students fell far behind their classmates. The…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Ryan, Sarah; Lavigne, Heather J.; Zweig, Jacqueline S.; Buffington, Pamela J.
2017-01-01
Districts across the nation are seeking ways to increase efficiency by maintaining, if not improving, educational outcomes using fewer resources. One measure that is sometimes used as a proxy for school district efficiency is an expenditure-to-performance ratio, for example a ratio of per pupil expenditures to student academic performance. This…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Los Angeles Unified School District, CA. Div. of Adult and Occupational Education.
This document consists of performance, computational, and communication modules used by the Working Smart workplace literacy project, a project conducted for the hotel and food industry in the Los Angeles area by a public school district and several profit and nonprofit companies. Literacy instruction was merged with job requirements of the…
Who's Next? Let's Stop Gambling on School Performance and Plan for Principal Succession
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Schmidt-Davis, Jon; Bottoms, Gene
2011-01-01
The future of public school performance demands that states and districts actively develop and seek strong principals. Instructional leadership is the critical element that is missing in efforts to improve America's lowest-performing schools and in moving good schools to great schools. Turnover among principals currently is at an unsustainable…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Abe, Yasuyo; Weinstock, Phyllis; Chan, Vincent; Meyers, Coby; Gerdeman, R. Dean; Brandt, W. Christopher
2015-01-01
A number of states and school districts have identified schools that perform better than expected, given the populations they serve, in order to recognize school performance or to learn from local school practices and policies. These schools have been labeled "beating the odds," "high-performing/high-poverty,"…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Miller, Lawrence J.; Gross, Betheny; Ouijdani, Monica
2012-01-01
In the era of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, school districts are under increasing pressure from policymakers to hold all students to high performance standards. In response, a growing number of schools are embracing the principles of student-centered learning (SCL). SCL is a contemporary approach that combines progressive and…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Shifrer, Dara; Turley, Ruth López; Heard, Holly
2017-01-01
Teacher performance pay programs are theorized to improve student achievement by incentivizing teachers, but opponents counter that teachers are not motivated by money. We used regression discontinuity techniques and data on a census of the students, teachers, and schools in a large urban minority-majority school district to show receipt of a…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Grissom, Jason A.; Strunk, Katharine O.
2012-01-01
This study examines the relative distribution of salary schedule returns to experience for beginning and veteran teachers. We argue that districts are likely to benefit from structuring salary schedules with greater experience returns early in the teaching career. To test this hypothesis, we match salary data to school-level student performance…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Wisconsin State Dept. of Public Instruction, Madison.
To demonstrate career education methods and procedures, seven Wisconsin school districts were chosen to participate in an incremental improvement project. Project activities were conducted district-wide and by individual districts. District-wide dissemination activities involved promoting demonstration packets and assessment/evaluation (AE)…
Frndak, Seth E
2014-12-02
This ecological study examines the relationship between food desert prevalence and academic achievement at the school district level. Sample included 232 suburban and urban school districts in New York State. Multiple open-source databases were merged to obtain: 4(th) grade science, English and math scores, school district demographic composition (NYS Report Card), regional socioeconomic indicators (American Community Survey), school district quality (US Common Core of Data), and food desert data (USDA Food Desert Atlas). Multiple regression models assessed the percentage of variation in achievement scores explained by food desert variables, after controlling for additional predictors. The proportion of individuals living in food deserts significantly explained 4th grade achievement scores, after accounting for additional predictors. School districts with higher proportions of individuals living in food desert regions demonstrated lower 4th grade achievement across science, English and math. Food deserts appear to be related to academic achievement at the school district level among urban and suburban regions. Further research is needed to better understand how food access is associated with academic achievement at the individual level. Significance for public healthThe prevalence of food deserts in the United States is of national concern. As poor nutrition in United States children continues to spark debate, food deserts are being evaluated as potential sources of low fruit and vegetable intake and high obesity rates. Cognitive development and IQ have been linked to nutrition patterns, suggesting that children in food desert regions may have a disadvantage academically. This research evaluates if an ecological relationship between food desert prevalence and academic achievement at the school district level can be demonstrated. Results suggest that food desert prevalence may relate to poor academic performance at the school district level. Significant variation in academic achievement among urban and suburban school districts is explained by food desert prevalence, above additional predictors. This research lays the groundwork for future studies at the individual level, with possible implications for community interventions in school districts containing food desert regions.
The Influence of Local Politics on Educational Decisions
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Bigham, Gary; Ray, Jan
2012-01-01
This ex post facto, causal-comparative research study examined student reading performance data within a school district before and after a school district-wide decision to alter the reading curriculum in response to local political pressure from parents. Data analysis revealed that test scores dropped to a significantly lower level, especially…
Private Firms Run Two Mich. Districts
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Ash, Katie
2013-01-01
Educators and policy observers are keeping a close eye on two controversial experiments in private management of public schools now unfolding in the western Michigan city of Muskegon Heights and in the Detroit-area community of Highland Park. Citing chronic budget woes in the communities' low-performing school districts, Gov. Rick Snyder of…
A 21st Century School System in the Mile-High City
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Osborne, David
2016-01-01
Some of the most dramatic gains in urban education have come from school districts using what many call a "portfolio strategy." Others call it "reinvention," a "21st century approach," or "relinquishment." By whatever name, it generally means that districts negotiate performance agreements with some mix of…
States Eye Looser Rein on Districts
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Jacobson, Linda
2008-01-01
The push to give school districts greater operating flexibility--a grassroots rallying cry eclipsed in recent years by the charter school movement--is seeing a resurgence, as states seek to spur innovation that will help raise student achievement. In Georgia, Governor Sonny Perdue is proposing "performance contracts" that would free…
The Problem: Low-Achieving Districts and Low-Performing Boards
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Lee, David E.; Eadens, Daniel W.
2014-01-01
Effective school districts maintain superintendent and school board collegiality which can foster success and connectedness among members. Delagardelle and Alsbury (2008) found that superintendents and board members are not consistent in their perceptions about the work the board does, and Glass (2007) found that states do not require boards to…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Ayala, Erika
2016-01-01
The purpose of this sequential explanatory embedded mixed methods study was to: (a) investigate and describe the academic performance of eighth grade students in the Falcon School District (FSD) who were designated as Long Term English Learners (LTELs) and participants in FSD's reading intervention program during their fourth through eighth grade…
How to Use the School Survey of Practices Associated with High Performance. REL 2016-162
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Weinstock, Phyllis; Yumoto, Futoshi; Abe, Yasuyo; Meyers, Coby; Wan, Yinmei
2016-01-01
This report describes and explains how to use the School Survey of Practices Associated with High Performance, which measures the degree to which schools are engaging in practices associated with high performance. State education departments and school districts can use the survey results to identify and describe school practices associated with…
The Case for High-Performance, Healthy Green Schools
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Carter, Leesa
2011-01-01
When trying to reach their sustainability goals, schools and school districts often run into obstacles, including financing, training, and implementation tools. Last fall, the U.S. Green Building Council-Georgia (USGBC-Georgia) launched its High Performance, Healthy Schools (HPHS) Program to help Georgia schools overcome those obstacles. By…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Steinberg, Matthew P.
2014-01-01
School districts throughout the United States are increasingly providing greater autonomy to local public (non-charter) school principals. In 2005-06, Chicago Public Schools initiated the Autonomous Management and Performance Schools program, granting academic, programmatic, and operational freedoms to select principals. This paper provides…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Schwamb, Andrea B.
2013-01-01
American public schools are currently facing a new mandated evaluation system that will create substantial change by requiring districts to evaluate professional staff based on two quantified measures: (a) state testing, and (b) a district determined measure. Although reforms have been at the forefront of policymakers' agendas, these initiatives…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Munoz, Marco A.; Portes, Pedro R.
A class size reduction (CSR) program was implemented in a large low-performing urban elementary school district. The CSR program helps schools improve student learning by hiring additional teachers so that children in the early elementary grades can attend smaller classes. This study used a participant-oriented evaluation model to examine the…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Johnson, Shawn Lamont L.
2013-01-01
This study examined the impact that cooperative learning and traditional learning have on the academic performance of elementary school students in rural school districts. Cooperative learning is considered a typical model that can maximize the effectiveness of constructivism. Slavin (1991, p. 71) completed a synthesis of research on cooperative…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Thompson, Terry J.; Gould, Karen J.
2005-01-01
In recent years the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township in Indianapolis has been awash in data. In attempts to improve levels of student achievement, the authors collected all manner of statistical details about students and schools and attempted to perform data analysis as part of the school improvement process. The authors were never…
Governing Staff Reductions: The Use and Abuse of Teacher Evaluations.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Phelan, William T.
1983-01-01
Indicates that most principals and teachers interviewed in 16 school districts in Massachusetts agreed that performance evaluations should be part of the reduction in force (RIF) process. Examines performance assessments currently being done in selected districts. (MJL)
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Psencik, Kay; Baldwin, Rhonda
2012-01-01
In 2010, district leaders of Douglas County Public Schools, Douglasville, Georgia, launched an ambitious initiative to ensure that teachers set goals that focus on increasing their effectiveness and show student growth. To achieve this goal, the district leadership team focused on common district assessments to establish common learning…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Dugger-Roberts, Cherith A.
2014-01-01
The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine if there was a relationship between the TCAP test and Pearson Benchmark assessment in elementary students' reading and language arts and math performance in a northeastern Tennessee school district. This study involved 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students. The study focused on the following…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Brown, James D.
2010-01-01
Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine Collins' good-to-great Level Five leadership attributes, as demonstrated by the leadership behaviors of superintendents of high-performing California public single-school districts. Methodology: The researcher used a case study design to conduct this study. Personal interviews were conducted in…
Healthy Schools Initiative: Implementation Study in Four San Mateo County School Districts
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Westrich, Lisa; Sanchez, Monika; Strobel, Karen; Duong, Nina
2012-01-01
The Sequoia Healthcare District (SHD), in collaboration with four local school districts--Belmont-Redwood Shores School District (BRSSD), Redwood City School District (RCSD), San Carlos School District (SCSD), and Sequoia Union High School District (SUHSD)--launched the Healthy Schools Initiative (HSI) in August 2010. This three-year initiative is…
Maintaining High-Performance Schools after Construction or Renovation
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Luepke, Gary; Ronsivalli, Louis J., Jr.
2009-01-01
With taxpayers' considerable investment in schools, it is critical for school districts to preserve their community's assets with new construction or renovation and effective facility maintenance programs. "High-performance" school buildings are designed to link the physical environment to positive student achievement while providing such benefits…
One Paradox in District Accountability and Site-Based Management.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Shellman, David W.
The paradox of site-based school management with use of standardized tests or instructional management systems that restrict teacher choices was evident in one school district in North Carolina in which measurement of student success has centered on student performance on state-mandated tests. A study was conducted to see if students whose…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Snipes, Jason; Doolittle, Fred; Herlihy, Corinne
This report examines the experiences of three large urban school districts (and part of a fourth) that raised academic performance for their districts as a whole, while also reducing racial differences in achievement. Educational challenges included low achievement, political conflict, inexperienced teachers, low expectations, and lack of…
Staff Satisfaction with Administration as a Measure of Consumer Satisfaction.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Tanguma, Jesus; Luster, Jane Nell
The school district in this study, "Special School District" (SSD), is under the administration of the Louisiana State Department of education and thus classified as a Louisiana state agency required to conform to the mandate that state agencies have performance indicators, including one for customer satisfaction. For the SSD, customer…
Professional Learning Communities and Their Impact on Student Achievement
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Story, Zenobia N.
2012-01-01
The purpose of the study was to assess the impact that professional learning communities (PLCs) have on student achievement. Through this study, the statewide performance results of a school district that implemented PLCs were examined. This study of an Illinois school district's statewide assessment results served as a foundation for further…
Handbook for Class I County School District Treasurers.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Illinois State Board of Education, Springfield.
This handbook is an updated edition provided by the Illinois State Board of Education for school district treasurers. Its intent is to assist Class I county treasurers in performing their duties efficiently and effectively. The handbook is divided into four sections, the first of which outlines custodial role, eligiblity, term of office, salary,…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Makkonen, Reino
2013-01-01
Many states and school districts have recently instituted revamped teacher evaluation policies in response to incentives from the federal government as well as a changing political climate favoring holding teachers accountable for the performance of their students. Many of these overhauls have mandated the incorporation of multiple performance…
Sticking Points: How School Districts Experience Implementing the Portfolio Strategy
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Lake, Robin; Posamentier, Jordan; Denice, Patrick; Hill, Paul
2016-01-01
The portfolio strategy is a change strategy for public education in a district or metropolitan area. It is founded on the idea of re-missioning government agencies from rigid bureaucratic entities that mostly manage compliance requirements and interest group politics to a new role: overseeing performance and a diverse range of school choices…
An Open Letter on Teacher Morale
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Strasser, Dina
2014-01-01
"What do you do--and what do you need--to stay sane?" This is what an educator asked a group of teachers and administrators in the Rochester City School District, one of the poor-performing school districts that the governor of that state had referred to as needing a "death penalty." The educators repeatedly noted five items…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Fletcher-Bates, Keisha N.
2010-01-01
A valid concern facing School districts within the state of Ohio, as well as across the country, is situated around methods to increase student performance on standardized high stakes tests and achieve the requirements of the mandated No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Law. Simultaneously, school districts are confronting a multitude of challenges to…
Characteristics of School Districts That Participate in Rigorous National Educational Evaluations
Stuart, Elizabeth A.; Bell, Stephen H.; Ebnesajjad, Cyrus; Olsen, Robert B.; Orr, Larry L.
2017-01-01
Given increasing interest in evidence-based policy, there is growing attention to how well the results from rigorous program evaluations may inform policy decisions. However, little attention has been paid to documenting the characteristics of schools or districts that participate in rigorous educational evaluations, and how they compare to potential target populations for the interventions that were evaluated. Utilizing a list of the actual districts that participated in 11 large-scale rigorous educational evaluations, we compare those districts to several different target populations of districts that could potentially be affected by policy decisions regarding the interventions under study. We find that school districts that participated in the 11 rigorous educational evaluations differ from the interventions’ target populations in several ways, including size, student performance on state assessments, and location (urban/rural). These findings raise questions about whether, as currently implemented, the results from rigorous impact studies in education are likely to generalize to the larger set of school districts—and thus schools and students—of potential interest to policymakers, and how we can improve our study designs to retain strong internal validity while also enhancing external validity. PMID:29276552
School Choice Participation Rates: Which Districts Are Pressured?
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Ni, Yongmei; Arsen, David
2011-01-01
School choice policies are intended to provide students in poorly performing schools the option of transferring to a better school. The associated loss of funding to new competitors is expected, in turn, to benefit students who remain in their assigned schools by spurring improved performance among the educators in them. The prospects for such…
Charter Schools' Impact on Traditional Public School Performance: Evidence from Arkansas
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Kalulu, Mavuto; Snyder, Thomas; Ouattara, Saliou N.
2017-01-01
This study estimates the effects of open-enrollment charter schools on student performance in traditional public schools in Arkansas. The paper examines the change in Iowa Assessment scores for first and second graders across Arkansas school districts between the 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 school years. The ordinary least-squares regression estimates…
Optimising cluster survey design for planning schistosomiasis preventive chemotherapy.
Knowles, Sarah C L; Sturrock, Hugh J W; Turner, Hugo; Whitton, Jane M; Gower, Charlotte M; Jemu, Samuel; Phillips, Anna E; Meite, Aboulaye; Thomas, Brent; Kollie, Karsor; Thomas, Catherine; Rebollo, Maria P; Styles, Ben; Clements, Michelle; Fenwick, Alan; Harrison, Wendy E; Fleming, Fiona M
2017-05-01
The cornerstone of current schistosomiasis control programmes is delivery of praziquantel to at-risk populations. Such preventive chemotherapy requires accurate information on the geographic distribution of infection, yet the performance of alternative survey designs for estimating prevalence and converting this into treatment decisions has not been thoroughly evaluated. We used baseline schistosomiasis mapping surveys from three countries (Malawi, Côte d'Ivoire and Liberia) to generate spatially realistic gold standard datasets, against which we tested alternative two-stage cluster survey designs. We assessed how sampling different numbers of schools per district (2-20) and children per school (10-50) influences the accuracy of prevalence estimates and treatment class assignment, and we compared survey cost-efficiency using data from Malawi. Due to the focal nature of schistosomiasis, up to 53% simulated surveys involving 2-5 schools per district failed to detect schistosomiasis in low endemicity areas (1-10% prevalence). Increasing the number of schools surveyed per district improved treatment class assignment far more than increasing the number of children sampled per school. For Malawi, surveys of 15 schools per district and 20-30 children per school reliably detected endemic schistosomiasis and maximised cost-efficiency. In sensitivity analyses where treatment costs and the country considered were varied, optimal survey size was remarkably consistent, with cost-efficiency maximised at 15-20 schools per district. Among two-stage cluster surveys for schistosomiasis, our simulations indicated that surveying 15-20 schools per district and 20-30 children per school optimised cost-efficiency and minimised the risk of under-treatment, with surveys involving more schools of greater cost-efficiency as treatment costs rose.
Policy Perspective: School Turnaround in England. Utilizing the Private Sector
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Corbett, Julie
2014-01-01
This paper, written by strategic partner of the Center on School Turnaround (CST), Julie Corbett, provides research and examples on England's approach to turning around its lowest performing schools. The English education system utilizes private vendors to support chronically low-performing schools and districts. The introduction is followed by…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Butzin, Sarah M.; Carroll, Robin; Lutz, Bridget
2006-01-01
Six years ago, South Heights Elementary School was the lowest-performing school in Kentucky's Henderson County School District. Teachers blamed poverty lack of parent involvement, poor discipline, and high staff turnover for the situation. Few expected to meet the state goals. Yet by 2004, South Heights was the fifth-highest-performing school in…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Dill-Varga, Barbara
2015-01-01
How do districts know if the resources they have allocated to support professional learning in their school district are actually improving the quality of teaching and impacting student performance? In an increasingly challenging financial environment, this is important to know. In this article, a Chicago-area district facing a budget deficit…
Do Accountability and Voucher Threats Improve Low-Performing Schools? NBER Working Paper No. 11597
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Figlio, David N.; Rouse, Cecilia
2005-01-01
In this paper we study the effects of the threat of school vouchers and school stigma in Florida on the performance of "low-performing" schools using student-level data from a subset of districts. Estimates of the change in school-level high-stakes test scores from the first year of the reform are consistent with the early results used…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Strunk, Katharine O.; McEachin, Andrew; Westover, Theresa N.
2014-01-01
The theory of action upon which high-stakes accountability policies are based calls for systemic reforms in educational systems that will emerge by pairing incentives for improvement with extensive and targeted technical assistance (TA) to build the capacity of low-performing schools and districts. To this end, a little discussed and often…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Ashby, Cornelia M.
2009-01-01
Presented herein is a statement of Cornelia M. Ashby, Director Education, Workforce, and Income Security. The early efforts of the District of Columbia Public Schools' (DCPS) to improve student achievement focused on implementing initiatives to improve student performance, including implementing a new staffing model; restructuring underperforming…
Anchorage School District Profile of Performance 1997-98. Assessment and Evaluation Report #98-3.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Fenton, Ray
The Anchorage School District (Alaska) provides a comprehensive program of education to students from kindergarten through grade 12. This profile focuses on student achievement and other outcome indicators of student success, but it does not include information on the social or physical wellness of Anchorage students. The first section gives an…
First Steps: What School Systems Can Do Right Now to Improve Teacher Compensation and Career Path
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Frank, Stephen; Baroody, Karen; Gordon, Jeff
2013-01-01
Across the country, school districts are struggling to improve student performance on flat or declining budgets. Many districts are understandably cautious about implementing large changes, such as redesigning the step-and-lane system that has existed for decades. New evaluation systems must be implemented and vetted before they are linked to…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Glazerman, Steven; Protik, Ali; Teh, Bing-ru; Bruch, Julie; Seftor, Neil
2012-01-01
This report describes the implementation and intermediate impacts of an intervention designed to provide incentives for a school district's highest-performing teachers to work in its lowest-achieving schools. The report is part of a larger study in which random assignment was used to form two equivalent groups of classrooms organized into teacher…
The Effect of Accelerated Reader on Reading Scores in a Rural School District
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Hunter, Teresa A.
2013-01-01
In this study, the implementation of Accelerated Reader (AR), a computer-assisted supplemental reading program, was investigated as a research-based instructional strategy to assess whether it aided a high-performing, rural school district in meeting adequate yearly progress goals. The theoretical framework was based on Vygotsky's zone of…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
DeMatthews, David E.
2016-01-01
Exclusionary discipline and the implementation of zero-tolerance policies are disproportionately used against African American students and other marginalized groups. This case involves an urban school district with historically high rates of suspension, a low-performing middle school, and a new principal seeking to create a more socially just…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Snelling, Anastasia; Belson, Sarah Irvine; Beard, Jonathan; Young, Kathleen
2015-01-01
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between television viewing time, physical activity level, food consumption patterns, and academic performance of adolescents in a large urban school district in the USA where health disparities are prevalent, particularly among minority residents. Design/Methodology/Approach: The…
Aim Higher: Lofty Goals and an Aligned System Keep a High Performer on Top
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
McCommons, David P.
2014-01-01
Every school district is feeling the pressure to ensure higher academic achievement for all students. A focus on professional learning for an administrative team not only improves student learning and achievement, but also assists in developing a systemic approach for continued success. This is how the Fox Chapel Area School District in…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Liu, Mingxing; Murphy, Rachel; Tao, Ran; An, Xuehui
2009-01-01
Based on a survey of rural school districts in Western China, this essay explores the effects of fiscal centralisation on the relationship between local governance and school district management, most particularly on how managerial power is distributed in the rural education sector. The essay also examines some of the possible effects that changes…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Liang, Senfeng
2015-01-01
This qualitative study examines how Chinese immigrant parents perceive the importance of sending their children to a "good" school district and analyzes their strategies in doing so. Nine families from different economic and educational backgrounds participated in the study. Results show that some parents were not satisfied with…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Mitchell, Carrie Lynn
2007-01-01
This study examines the impact of 2 professional learning community (PLC) classroom practices on the English Language Arts achievement of California's most at-risk subgroups between selected higher- and lower-performing elementary schools in a southern California school district. The conclusions from this study agree with the body of research,…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Klein, Christopher C.
2008-01-01
A large literature finds that resources are not significant determinants of student performance. These results may arise because resources really do not matter in public education or because local school districts allocate additional resources to poorer performing schools. To shed light on this issue, a unique data set for the Metropolitan…
Lin, Shao; Kielb, Christine L; Reddy, Amanda L; Chapman, Bonnie R; Hwang, Syni-An
2012-03-01
Good school indoor air quality (IAQ) can affect the health and functioning of school occupants. Thus, it is important to assess the degree to which schools and districts employ strategies to ensure good IAQ management. We examined and compared the patterns of IAQ management strategies between public elementary schools and their school districts in New York State. District-level information obtained from surveys of district facilities managers in 326 districts was described and stratified by district size and socioeconomic status. School-level information obtained from surveys of head custodians in 770 elementary schools was then compared with the district-level information in 241 districts. About 47% of participating school districts reported having a district-wide IAQ program, with a large range in the prevalence of specific IAQ management strategies. Airing out newly painted areas was the most commonly reported (92%) and having a classroom animal policy was the least commonly reported (29%). Larger districts and districts with a district-wide IAQ program were more likely to report certain IAQ strategies than other districts. Elementary schools and their districts were most likely to report airing out newly painted areas (76%). The most common area of disagreement was construction after hours (50%). The top strategy not reported at either level was having an IAQ coordinator (53%). Many school districts lack key IAQ management strategies, and differences exist between district-level policy and school-level practice. Districts and schools should work together to formalize and expand existing IAQ policies and inform stakeholders about these strategies. © 2012, American School Health Association.
Norm-Referenced Tests. Summary. REL 2014-004
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Stuit, David; Austin, Megan J.; Berends, Mark; Gerdeman, R. Dean
2014-01-01
Recent changes to state laws on accountability have prompted school districts to design teacher performance evaluation systems that incorporate student achievement (student growth) as a major component. As a consequence, some states and districts are considering teacher value- added models as part of teacher performance evaluations. Value-added…
Norm-Referenced Tests. REL 2014-004
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Stuit, David; Austin, Megan J.; Berends, Mark; Gerdeman, R. Dean
2014-01-01
Recent changes to state laws on accountability have prompted school districts to design teacher performance evaluation systems that incorporate student achievement (student growth) as a major component. As a consequence, some states and districts are considering teacher value-added models as part of teacher performance evaluations. Value-added…
Optimising cluster survey design for planning schistosomiasis preventive chemotherapy
Sturrock, Hugh J. W.; Turner, Hugo; Whitton, Jane M.; Gower, Charlotte M.; Jemu, Samuel; Phillips, Anna E.; Meite, Aboulaye; Thomas, Brent; Kollie, Karsor; Thomas, Catherine; Rebollo, Maria P.; Styles, Ben; Clements, Michelle; Fenwick, Alan; Harrison, Wendy E.; Fleming, Fiona M.
2017-01-01
Background The cornerstone of current schistosomiasis control programmes is delivery of praziquantel to at-risk populations. Such preventive chemotherapy requires accurate information on the geographic distribution of infection, yet the performance of alternative survey designs for estimating prevalence and converting this into treatment decisions has not been thoroughly evaluated. Methodology/Principal findings We used baseline schistosomiasis mapping surveys from three countries (Malawi, Côte d’Ivoire and Liberia) to generate spatially realistic gold standard datasets, against which we tested alternative two-stage cluster survey designs. We assessed how sampling different numbers of schools per district (2–20) and children per school (10–50) influences the accuracy of prevalence estimates and treatment class assignment, and we compared survey cost-efficiency using data from Malawi. Due to the focal nature of schistosomiasis, up to 53% simulated surveys involving 2–5 schools per district failed to detect schistosomiasis in low endemicity areas (1–10% prevalence). Increasing the number of schools surveyed per district improved treatment class assignment far more than increasing the number of children sampled per school. For Malawi, surveys of 15 schools per district and 20–30 children per school reliably detected endemic schistosomiasis and maximised cost-efficiency. In sensitivity analyses where treatment costs and the country considered were varied, optimal survey size was remarkably consistent, with cost-efficiency maximised at 15–20 schools per district. Conclusions/Significance Among two-stage cluster surveys for schistosomiasis, our simulations indicated that surveying 15–20 schools per district and 20–30 children per school optimised cost-efficiency and minimised the risk of under-treatment, with surveys involving more schools of greater cost-efficiency as treatment costs rose. PMID:28552961
Strengthening Teacher Evaluation: What District Leaders Can Do
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Donaldson, Morgaen L.; Donaldson, Gordon A., Jr.
2012-01-01
School districts have typically not done a good job of managing the human side of teacher evaluation. In general, neither supervisors nor teachers find performance assessment a constructive, interpersonally respectful experience. District leaders can cultivate high-quality teaching--and attend to the human side of assessment--by taking five…
Assessing District Support for Leadership Development: Asking the Right Questions.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Snow-Renner, Ravay
This document provides guiding questions and a process for school district personnel to assess the district's organizational capacity for supporting strong educational leaders in a standards-based system. These questions reflect the most recent research literature about leadership and its optimal organizational supports in high-performing school…
Progress and Promise: Results from the Boston Pilot Schools
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Tung, Rosann; Ouimette, Monique; Rugen, Leah
2006-01-01
New research conducted by Boston's Center for Collaborative Education documents significant achievement by students who attend the city's Pilot Schools. Pilot School students are performing better than the district averages across every indicator of student engagement and performance, including the statewide standardized assessment (MCAS). In…
Going Green: Eco-Friendly Schools
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Whelan, Debra Lau
2007-01-01
A growing number of studies show that a school's physical condition--especially its lighting and indoor air quality--directly affect student performance. A 2005 Turner Construction survey of green buildings found that 70 percent of districts with sustainable schools reported improved student performance. It also makes perfect sense that…
School Progress Report 2012. Montgomery County Public Schools
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Montgomery County Public Schools, 2013
2013-01-01
The 2012 School Progress Report for Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) provides state, county, and individual school performance data, as well as information on student attendance, high school graduation rates, and the professional qualifications of teachers at the state, district, and school levels. Montgomery County primary schools are…
School Progress Report 2013. Montgomery County Public Schools
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Montgomery County Public Schools, 2014
2014-01-01
The 2013 School Progress Report for Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) provides state, county, and individual school performance data, as well as information on student attendance, high school graduation rates, and the professional qualifications of teachers at the state, district, and school levels for the 2012-2013 school year. Montgomery…
Every School Day Counts: The Forum Guide to Collecting and Using Attendance Data. NFES 2009-804
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
National Forum on Education Statistics, 2009
2009-01-01
This Forum guide offers best practice suggestions on collecting and using student attendance data to improve performance. It includes a standard set of codes to make attendance data comparable across districts and states. There are real-life examples of how attendance information has been used by school districts. Chapter 1 discusses the…
The Impact of Early Exposure of Eighth Grade Math Standards on End of Grade Assessments
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Robertson, Tonjai E.
2016-01-01
The purpose of this study was to examine the Cumberland County Schools district-wide issue surrounding the disproportional performance of eighth grade Math I students' proficiency scores on standardized end-of-grade and end-of-course assessments. The study focused on the impact of the school district incorporating eighth grade math standards in…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Adams, Isaac, Jr.
This report presents the results of an informal survey which focused upon the manner in which urban school systems are organized to perform the functions of utilization and dissemination of educational innovations. The systems of each of twenty-eight urban districts surveyed are briefly described. Results presented indicate that (1) all…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Killion, Joellen; Hirsh, Stephanie
2012-01-01
What percentage of their budgets should schools and districts invest in professional learning? To answer that question, schools and districts must first know how much they are spending on professional learning and be able to connect that spending to student achievement. Knowing what is invested in professional learning requires understanding the…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Public Policy Forum, 2002
2002-01-01
Wisconsin's Open Enrollment program, which policymakers hope will improve educational performance by introducing competition to public schools, allows students to enroll in any district in the state, provided space is available. First implemented in the 1998-1999 school year, the program now includes 1% of all Wisconsin K-12 students. In its first…
Impact of Enrollment on the Quality of Learning in Primary Schools in Imenti Central District, Kenya
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Mwirigi, Silas Francis; Muthaa, George M.
2015-01-01
To promote participation and access to education, the government introduced free primary education. The introduction of FSE has resulted into increased enrolment at all levels which has been blamed for the poor performance of pupils in public primary school of Imenti Central District. The current study sought to determine the impact of enrollment…
Evaluating the Performance of Philadelphia's Charter Schools. Working Paper WR-550-WPF
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Zimmer, Ron; Blanc, Suzanne; Gill, Brian; Christman, Jolley
2008-01-01
Plagued by long-term poor student outcomes, a number of reforms have been implemented within the Philadelphia School District to improve performance, including the use of charter schools. The number of charter schools in Philadelphia has risen from four to more than 60 over the past decade, and these schools now serve over 30,000 students. Debate…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Tadlock, James; Nesbit, Lamar
The Jackson Municipal Separate School District, Mississippi, has instituted a mixed-criteria reduction-in-force procedure emphasizing classroom performance to a greater degree than seniority, certification, and staff development participation. The district evaluation process--measuring classroom teaching performance--generated data for the present…
The Importance of Civic Responsibility in Higher Performing Middle Schools: An Empirical Study
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Wilcox, Kristen C.
2011-01-01
In this case study, a district-wide focus on the development of civic responsibility is seen as an important component in the success of higher performing middle schools. Salient features of best practice were gathered from teacher and administrator interviews and documentary evidence in 10 higher performing, yet "beating the odds" schools, and…
An Intervention to Improve School and Student Performance
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Shaver, Becky
2008-01-01
Georgia Leadership Institute for School Improvement (GLISI) used ISPI's 10 Standards of Performance Technology to share the design, development, and implementation of an intervention striving to help Georgia districts and schools share their success stories in a clear and concise format. This intervention took the form of a PowerPoint…
Quality in Education in the Calcasieu Parish School System: Experiences of Administrators
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Quebodeaux, Pamela Stacey
2010-01-01
The Malcolm Baldrige Education Criteria for Performance Excellence outline effective practices and core values that have assisted businesses, health agencies, government institutions, and several school systems in the United States to improve performance within their organizations. Recent studies of school districts from across the nation have…
The 9th grade shock and the high school dropout crisis.
Pharris-Ciurej, Nikolas; Hirschman, Charles; Willhoft, Joseph
2012-05-01
Retrospective questions on educational attainment in national surveys and censuses tend to over-estimate high school graduation rates by 15-20% points relative to administrative records. Administrative data on educational enrollment are, however, only available at the aggregate level (state, school district, and school levels) and the recording of inter-school transfers are generally incomplete. With access to linked individual-level administrative records from a very large "West Coast metropolitan school district" we track patterns of high school attrition and on-time high school graduation of individual students. Even with adjustments for the omission of out-of-district transfers (estimates of omission are presented), the results of this study show that failure in high school, as indexed by retention and attrition, are almost as common as on-time high school graduation. In addition to the usual risk factors of disadvantaged background, we find that the "9th grade shock"-an unpredicted decline in academic performance upon entering high school-is a key mechanism behind the continuing crisis of high school attrition. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Learner Performance in Mandarin Immersion and High School World Language Programs: A Comparison
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Xu, Xiaoqiu; Padilla, Amado M.; Silva, Duarte M.
2015-01-01
This study compared the Mandarin performance of elementary immersion program students and high school world language program students in the same school district. A cross-sectional design was employed to gather information on Mandarin proficiency of fourth and fifth graders and Level 4 and Level 5 (AP Chinese) high school students who took the…
Measuring School Performance To Improve Student Achievement and To Reward Effective Programs.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Heistad, Dave; Spicuzza, Rick
This paper describes the method that the Minneapolis Public School system (MPS), Minnesota, uses to measure school and student performance. MPS uses a multifaceted system that both captures and accounts for the complexity of a large urban school district. The system incorporates: (1) a hybrid model of critical indicators that report on level of…
Creating a Comprehensive Picture of School Performance. A PACER Policy Brief
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Duffy, Mark; Jenkins, Della
2015-01-01
For more than two decades, states have been required to report publicly on the academic performance of schools and districts. These school rating systems have received increased public attention amid growing concerns about the prevalence and cost of standardized testing in schools. According to a recent Gallup Poll, 64 percent of the public…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
O'Connell, Patricia A.; And Others
This report presents the results of a collaborative study undertaken by five rural, unit school districts in Illinois to provide data to be used in planning for school improvement. Information was gathered from on-site visits by teams of constituents from other districts and through a survey of perceptions of local community persons regarding…
A Documentation System for Teacher Improvement or Termination
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Frels, Kelly; Horton, Janet L.
2007-01-01
The primary objective of a school district's teacher evaluation system is to improve teachers' performance so they can become successful and contribute to the objectives of the district. If the evaluation does not produce this positive result, the teacher must be replaced, either by resignation or termination. The district's evaluation system thus…
Who Moved My Curriculum? Leadership Preparation Programs and the Core Technology of Schools
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Doolittle, Gini; Browne, Evelyn Gallagher
2011-01-01
This cross-case study utilizes the publically available data of three urban low-performing, low-socioeconomic-status districts designated as "districts in need of improvement" under No Child Left Behind legislation. Despite multiple interventions aimed at improving student learning, these and other districts remain in corrective action.…
Ontario District Embraces an Evolving Approach to Learning
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Belchetz, Denese; Witherow, Kathy
2014-01-01
The York Region District School Board is recognized as a high-performing district in Ontario, Canada, and has also garnered international attention. Visitors from across Canada, as well as Singapore, Finland, England, Scotland, Holland, the Bahamas, Korea, China, and Taiwan, have come to learn about its system and observe the teaching, learning,…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
US House of Representatives, 2005
2005-01-01
In this hearing on the District of Columbia's public school system (DCPS), the Honorable Tom Davis, chairman of the Committee on Government Reform, says in his opening statement that the District's improved health cannot be sustained without a better public school system, and that the lack of performance improvement threatens future growth and…
Teachers' Coping Strategies for Teaching Science in a ``Low-Performing'' School District
NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)
Moore, Felicia M.
2007-10-01
This study describes how teachers use their personal knowledge of a school district and their students to cope with teaching under stressful situations associated with economic, social, and institutional factors. The 3 teachers dealt with these issues in unique ways, focusing on helping students to overcome negative perceptions, value the importance of an education, and build strong relationships. A model of multicultural science professional development is proposed that complements the strengths that these teachers have. A task for science educators working with teachers and administration in schools and districts that are “critically low performing” is to support everyone in implementing pedagogical methods aimed at empowerment, social justice, and high achievement for all students.
Back from the Brink: How a Bold Vision and a Focus on Resources Can Drive System Improvement System
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Baroody, Karen; Rho, Lois; Huberlie, Ali
2015-01-01
In November 2011, Lawrence Public Schools became the first school district in Massachusetts to enter into state receivership. It was a chronically low-performing district with a graduation rate at 52 percent, and it had not had a permanent superintendent in two years. By June 2014, however, things had dramatically changed for the better. This case…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Burke, Garfield, Jr.; Wang, Ying
2010-01-01
Public school districts in the Mississippi (MS) Delta are under severe pressure to make rapid and adaptable changes in response to the federal legislation No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and the MS Plan for Student Achievement: Assessment, Accreditation, and Accountability. These reform Acts require higher student performance standards and new…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
White, Tammy Tara
2013-01-01
This is a quantitative research study using archival data to focus on the achievement of Gifted & Talented students in two South Carolina public school districts. The researcher used an open cohort comparative research design for this study. This study attempted to find if differences in student performance existed between students labeled as…
The Evergreen Effect: Washington's Poor Evaluation System Revealed. Charts You Can Trust
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Aldeman, Chad
2013-01-01
When the state of Washington identified the bottom 5 percent of its lowest-performing schools in 2011, five of the 19 schools in Pasco School District made the list. All elementary schools, they had failed to meet academic performance goals every year since the state began measuring schools against them in 2006. Over a three-year period, only 30…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Carter-Blocker, Vickie R.
2012-01-01
The purpose of this study was to examine the factors impacting teacher attrition in high-performing and low-performing elementary rural schools in South Carolina. Several factors were identified that interfered with teachers returning to the teaching profession. School districts in rural areas need to be better informed of the factors that affect…
From Districts to Schools: The Distribution of Resources across Schools in Big City School Districts
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Rubenstein, Ross; Schwartz, Amy Ellen; Stiefel, Leanna; Amor, Hella Bel Hadj
2007-01-01
While the distribution of resources across school districts is well studied, relatively little attention has been paid to how resources are allocated to individual schools inside those districts. This paper explores the determinants of resource allocation across schools in large districts based on factors that reflect differential school costs or…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Ngware, Moses W.; Mutisya, Maurice; Oketch, Moses
2012-01-01
This paper focuses on the patterns of teaching styles and active teaching across subjects and between low and high performing schools in an attempt to examine what accounts for differences in performance between schools which are within the same locality. It uses data collected in 72 primary schools spread across six districts in Kenya. Video…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Smith, Garth Spencer; Hardman, Joanne
2014-01-01
In this study the impact of computer immersion on performance of school leavers Senior Certificate mathematics scores was investigated across 31 schools in the EMDC East education district of Cape Town, South Africa by comparing performance between two groups: a control and an experimental group. The experimental group (14 high schools) had access…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Glazerman, Steven; Max, Jeffrey
2011-01-01
This brief describes the prevalence of highest-performing teachers in ten purposely selected districts across seven states. The overall patterns indicate that low-income students have unequal access, on average, to the district's highest-performing teachers at the middle school level but not at the elementary level. However, there is evidence of…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Spina, Nancy; Buckley, Phillip; Puchner, Laurel
2014-01-01
This study examines the perceptions, attitudes and beliefs of administrators and teachers in a Southwestern Illinois School District regarding the recent reforms in teacher performance evaluation. This study uses a qualitative approach and provides data from individual and focus group interviews to determine the extent to which the district is…
Performance Contracting: Taking School Technology Green
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Taival, Dane
2009-01-01
Energy efficiency makes fiscal and environmental sense, and so does energy savings performance contracting. Because an energy savings performance contract can create a self-funding package of products and services that reduce energy and operating costs, over time, school districts' sometimes-large initial investment in emerging technologies saves…
Enhancing Public School Education: A Collaborative Partnership for School Resiliency
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Cunningham, Henry R.; Lewis, Starr
2010-01-01
Urban schools are plagued with multiple issues that contribute to their low graduation rate. University of Louisville took a step forward by partnering with the school district to transform five schools into high performing schools. Building on the strengths of these schools, a collaborative partnership was developed that involved the entire…
Electric School Bus Testing | Transportation Research | NREL
Electric School Bus Evaluation Electric School Bus Evaluation Photo of children boarding school bus . NREL is evaluating the performance of electric and conventional school buses operated by two California school districts. Photo courtesy of School Bus Fleet Magazine NREL is evaluating the in-service
2015-16 Guide to Calculating School and District Grades
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Florida Department of Education, 2016
2016-01-01
School grades provide an easily understandable metric to measure the performance of a school. Parents and the general public can use the school grade and its associated components to understand how well each school is serving its students. The school grades calculation was revised substantially for the 2014-15 school year to implement statutory…
District wellness policies and school-level practices in Minnesota, USA.
Larson, Nicole; Davey, Cynthia; Hoffman, Pamela; Kubik, Martha Y; Nanney, Marilyn S
2016-01-01
To compare the strength of district wellness policies with corresponding school-level practices reported by principals and teachers. District-level wellness policy data were collected from school district websites and, if not available online, by requests made to district administrators in the autumn of 2013. The strength of district policies was scored using the Wellness School Assessment Tool. School-level data were drawn from the 2012 Minnesota School Health Profiles principal and teacher surveys and the National Center for Education Statistics Common Core Data. Generalized estimating equations which accounted for school-level demographics and the nesting of up to two schools within some districts were used to examine ten district policy items and fourteen school-level practices of relevance to nutrition standards, nutrition education and wellness promotion, and physical activity promotion. State-wide sample of 180 districts and 212 public schools in Minnesota, USA. The mean number of energy-dense, nutrient-poor snack foods and beverages available for students to purchase at school was inversely related to the strength of district wellness policies regulating vending machines and school stores (P=0·01). The proportion of schools having a joint use agreement for shared use of physical activity facilities was inversely related to the strength of district policies addressing community use of school facilities (P=0·03). No associations were found between the strength of other district policies and school-level practices. Nutrition educators and other health professionals should assist schools in periodically assessing their wellness practices to ensure compliance with district wellness policies and environments supportive of healthy behaviours.
District wellness policies and school-level practices in Minnesota
Larson, Nicole; Davey, Cynthia; Hoffman, Pamela; Kubik, Martha Y.; Nanney, Marilyn S.
2015-01-01
Objective To compare the strength of district wellness policies with corresponding school-level practices reported by principals and teachers. Design District-level wellness policy data was collected from school district websites and, if not available online, by requests made to district administrators in the fall of 2013. The strength of district policies was scored using the Wellness School Assessment Tool. School-level data were drawn from the 2012 Minnesota School Health Profiles principal and teacher surveys and National Center for Education Statistics Common Core Data. Generalized estimating equations which accounted for school-level demographics and the nesting of up to two schools within some districts were used to examine 10 district policy items and 14 school-level practices of relevance to nutrition standards, nutrition education and wellness promotion, and physical activity promotion. Setting/Subjects Statewide sample of 180 districts and 212 public schools in Minnesota. Results The mean number of energy-dense, nutrient-poor snack foods and beverages available for students to purchase at school was inversely related to the strength of district wellness policies regulating vending machines and school stores (p=0.01). The proportion of schools having a joint use agreement for shared use of physical activity facilities was inversely related to the strength of district policies addressing community use of school facilities (p=0.03). No associations were found between the strength of other district policies and school-level practices. Conclusions Nutrition educators and other health professionals should assist schools in periodically assessing their wellness practices to ensure compliance with district wellness policies and environments supportive of healthy behaviors. PMID:25990324
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Grissom, Jason; Kalogrides, Demetra; Loeb, Susanna
2015-01-01
School performance pressures apply disproportionately to tested grades and subjects. Using longitudinal administrative data and teacher survey data from a large urban school district, we examine schools' responses to those pressures in assigning teachers to high-stakes and low-stakes classrooms. We find that teachers who produce greater student…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Calkins, Andrew; Guenther, William; Belfiore, Grace; Lash, Dave
2007-01-01
The goal of this study was to produce recommendations for states and school districts seeking a flexible, systematic approach to swift and significant transformation in schools (particularly high schools) deemed chronically under-performing under No Child Left Behind or state accountability systems. This research leads the authors to believe that…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Green, Curt R.
2013-01-01
Urban school districts throughout the United States are creating single gender classrooms or schools to improve student achievements for their lowest performing subgroups (Noguera, 2009). It is hoped that separating the sexes will improve domains such as discipline, attendance and academic performance, while decreasing the dropout rate. If single…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
American Federation of Teachers (NJ), 2012
2012-01-01
School districts close schools for many appropriate reasons. School closure has now evolved into a school improvement strategy. Sometimes the strategy is to close the lowest-performing schools rather than low-enrollment schools and move the students into higher-achieving neighborhood schools. School closure also has become a common strategy to…
Attaining Reading Success through School-Wide and Content-Based Literacy
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Joseph Watts, Martha
2013-01-01
Reading performance among Grade 11 students has been low in the local school district under study. Schools within the boundaries of that setting have implemented research-based interventions to curb this problem of poor reading performance. A quasi-experimental, causal-comparative study was conducted to investigate the effect of Marzano's…
How to Improve a School that Is Already High Performing: Innovation in the Field of Education
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Caridas, Evangeline; Hammer, Mark
2006-01-01
(Purpose) The case study's purpose was to examine Participative Management Style, high performance strategies, intangible and tangible indicators, trust and its creation of superior achievement in a school district for elementary and middle school children (Illinois). (Methodology) A collaboration effort by Superintendent, administrative staff,…
Correlation between the McREL Leadership Practices and High and Low Performing Schools
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Abuyen, Jocelyn Lodronio
2016-01-01
This study explored elementary school principal leadership responsibilities in one school district in San Diego County. The researcher sought to examine which of the 21 leadership responsibilities and second-order change behaviors identified by Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) do principals of high-performing schools…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Idaho State Legislature, Boise. Office of Performance Evaluation.
In June 1995, the Idaho Joint Legislative Oversight Committee directed the Office of Performance Evaluations to conduct an evaluation of school district pupil transportation. This report, the last in a series of four, examines the apparent cost difference between district-operated transportation programs and those that are contracted to…
From the Middle to the Top of the Heap! Excellence in Rural Education.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Carr, John C.
Since 1975 the Contoocook Valley District, a small rural cooperative school district in southwestern New Hampshire, has developed a performance-based student competency program which has resulted in a dramatic increase in scores on the Stanford Achievement Test. The district is comprised of 9 towns, covers an area of almost 300 square miles, and…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Center for Comprehensive School Reform and Improvement, 2009
2009-01-01
Leadership is crucial for effective, lasting school improvement. Although research has established that strong, competent principals are vital for high-performing schools (Hallinger, 2003; Leithwood, 1994), attention is turning increasingly to the importance of effective district leadership, including school boards and their contributions to…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Reeves, Cheryl L.
2014-01-01
Because there was a gap in the literature about the nuances of a four-day school week, it was not known if there was a difference in performance indicators in a school calendar with Monday off compared to a school calendar with Friday off. The purpose of this comparative descriptive study was to determine if there was a difference in achievement…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Waleff, Marci Lyn
2010-01-01
Some fourth, fifth and sixth grade students in a rural Pennsylvania school district are not achieving at a proficient level and have low self-efficacy in reading. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between teacher implemented mastery orientation goals, students' judgment of their ability to perform the task of reading…
Strong Agents and Weak Systems: University Support for School Level Improvement
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Nehring, James H.; O'Brien, Ellen J.
2012-01-01
This study examined individual and school level factors that advance and suppress the traits of high performing schools. Based on action plans and reflective journals of 28 school level practitioners in 14 schools across 10 school districts, researchers tracked the progress of each practitioner from participation in a university-based school…
Analysis of County School Districts in Arkansas.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Budd, Karol B.; Charlton, J.L.
The 1948, Arkansas School District Reorganization Act was passed in an effort to reduce the 1589 small school districts to a smaller number. Those districts not consolidated would form county districts. As of the 1967-68 school year, 26 of these county districts remained. The purpose of this study was to provide information drawing attention to…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Hall, Gene E.; Caffarella, Edward; Bartlett, Ellen
This paper reports how one school district has successfully implemented a major innovation, the Performance Pay Plan (PPP) for Teachers, and how they have collaborated with change process researchers to assess implementation. The paper emphasizes: the community-wide process of involvement and trust building used by the district to launch and…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Shafiq, Hasan
2013-01-01
Over the last few decades school accountability for student performance has become an issue at the forefront of education. The federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) and various regulations by individual states have set standards for student performance at both the district and individual public and charter school levels, and certain…
2014-15 Guide to Calculating Informational Baseline School and District Grades
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Florida Department of Education, 2016
2016-01-01
School grades provide an easily understandable metric to measure the performance of a school. Parents and the general public can use the informational baseline school grade and its associated components to understand how well each school is serving its students. The school grades calculation was revised substantially for the 2014-15 school year to…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Council of the Great City Schools, 2012
2012-01-01
"Managing for Results in America's Great City Schools, 2012" is presented by the Council of the Great City Schools to its members and the public. The purpose of the project was and is to develop performance measures that can improve the business operations of urban public school districts nationwide. This year's report includes data from 61 of the…
Early to Rise? The Effect of Daily Start Times on Academic Performance
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Edwards, Finley
2012-01-01
Local school districts often stagger daily start times for their schools in order to reduce busing costs. This paper uses data on all middle school students in Wake County, NC from 1999 to 2006 to identify the causal effect of daily start times on academic performance. Using variation in start times within schools over time, the effect is a two…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Kober, Nancy; Rentner, Diane Stark
2011-01-01
As Congress considers legislation to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965, one topic of debate is the program of school improvement grants (SIGs) authorized by section 1003(g) of Title I. SIGs are intended to help to turn around low-performing schools and are part of the larger ESEA Title I program to improve…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Lynn, Marvin; Bacon, Jennifer Nicole; Totten, Tommy L.; Bridges, Thurman L., III; Jennings, Michael E.
2010-01-01
Background/Context: The study examines teachers' and administrators' perspectives on the persistent academic failure of African American male high school students. The study took place between 2003 and 2005 in a low-performing high school in Summerfield County, a Black suburban county in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States with a poverty…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
vonWurmb, Elizabeth C.
2013-01-01
This dissertation undertakes an analysis of 1,044 performance evaluations from New York State School Music Association (NYSSMA) Spring Festival solo adjudication ratings of student performers from a large suburban school district. It relies on results of evaluations of observed performances, and takes these evaluations as assessments of what the…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Grissom, Jason A.; Kalogrides, Demetra; Loeb, Susanna
2017-01-01
School performance pressures apply disproportionately to tested grades and subjects. Using longitudinal administrative data--including achievement data from untested grades--and teacher survey data from a large urban district, we examine schools' responses to those pressures in assigning teachers to high-stakes and low-stakes classrooms. We find…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Chambers, Jennifer R.
2012-01-01
This qualitative comparative case study identified factors that distinguish between high and low-performance on reading achievement in elementary rural Appalachian schools. This study determined the most effective instructional reading strategies, as well as other influential factors, implemented by school districts in the rural Appalachia area…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Chambers, Jennifer; Hausman, Charles
2014-01-01
This qualitative comparative case study identified factors that distinguish between high and low-performance on reading achievement in elementary rural Appalachian schools. This study determined the most effective instructional reading strategies, as well as other influential factors, implemented by school districts in the rural Appalachia area…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Vargas, Nestor Albert
2013-01-01
The objective of this study was to generate principal and teacher descriptions of what constitutes a teacher's "special fitness to perform" in a public urban continuation high school with a concentration of at-risk students. The sample included 6 continuation principals and 15 continuation teachers from a large urban school district in…
Alaska's Public Schools: 2011-2012 Report Card to the Public
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Alaska Department of Education & Early Development, 2012
2012-01-01
This "Report Card to the Public" is published in accordance with Alaska Statute 14.03.120 for the school year 2011-2012. Under state law, each school district is required to report information about its plans and performance to its community. This report includes a statewide summary of performance results. It reports the status of public…
Alaska's Public Schools: 2012-2013 Report Card to the Public
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Alaska Department of Education & Early Development, 2013
2013-01-01
This "Report Card to the Public" is published in accordance with Alaska Statute 14.03.120 for the school year 2012-2013. Under state law, each school district is required to report information about its plans and performance to its community. This report includes a statewide summary of performance results. Public knowledge of the school…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Wong, Kenneth K.; Shen, Francis X.
2013-01-01
Mayoral control and accountability is one of very few major education reforms that aim at governance coherence in this nation's highly fragmented urban school systems. A primary feature of mayoral governance is that it holds the office of the mayor accountable for school performance. As an institutional redesign, mayoral governance integrates…
School Correlates of Academic Behaviors and Performance among McKinney-Vento Identified Youth
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Stone, Susan; Uretsky, Mathew
2016-01-01
We utilized a pooled sample of elementary, middle, and high school-aged children identified as homeless via definitions set forth by McKinney-Vento legislation in a large urban district in California to estimate the extent to which school factors contributed to student attendance, suspensions, test-taking behaviors, and performance on state…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Hampton, Steve; And Others
1995-01-01
Examines effects of socioeconomic status, school funding, English proficiency, and Latino population concentration on achievement scores of students in grades 3, 6, and 12 in 66 rural California school districts. Performance on the California Assessment Program was predicted primarily by parental socioeconomic status, and, unexpectedly, improved…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Moore, Glenn M.
2012-01-01
Purpose and Method of Study. The primary purpose of this quantitative study was to analyze the relationship between school district expenditures and student academic achievement in 102 public elementary school districts in the state of Oklahoma. The secondary purpose was to investigate the relationship between school district expenditures and…
Leading Implementation of 21st Century Skills: Technology
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Blattner, David Craig
2012-01-01
A qualitative case study was conducted on the Mooresville Graded School Districts's (MGSD) digital conversion for the entire school district. MGSD is a semi-rural small suburban school district with 5,450 students kindergarten through twelfth grade. The school district consists of three elementary schools, two intermediate schools, one middle…
Oregon School Bond Manual. Seventh Edition.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Oregon State Dept. of Education, Salem.
To help school districts comply with Oregon's school bond laws, this manual provides guidelines for school district attorneys and personnel in the issuance and sale of school district bonds. The manual deals with the three primary types of Oregon school district borrowings: (1) general obligation bonds; (2) tax and revenue anticipation notes; and…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Strunk, Katharine O.; McEachin, Andrew
2012-01-01
Building on Strunk, McEachin, and Westover (2011), the authors examine whether or not District Assistance and Intervention Teams (DAITs) have a differential impact on student performance across school and student characteristics. They use a quasi-experimental design to examine the impacts of DAITs on student achievement on math and English…
The Correlates of Academic Performance for English Learner Students in a New England District
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Parker, Caroline; O'Dwyer, Laura; Irwin, Clare
2016-01-01
English learner students are one of the fastest growing subgroups in America's schools, and gaps between English learner students and their native English-speaking peers in academic outcomes remain large in most districts and states. This study examines data for all English learner students in grades K-12 in the study district who took the…
Michael, Shannon; Brener, Nancy D.; Coffield, Edward; Kingsley, Beverly S.; Zytnick, Deena; Blanck, Heidi
2016-01-01
Introduction Foods and beverages marketed in schools are typically of poor nutritional value. School districts may adopt policies and practices to restrict marketing of unhealthful foods and to promote healthful choices. Students’ exposure to marketing practices differ by school demographics, but these differences have not yet been examined by district characteristics. Methods We analyzed data from the 2012 School Health Policies and Practices Study to examine how food and beverage marketing and promotion policies and practices varied by district characteristics such as metropolitan status, size, and percentage of non-Hispanic white students. Results Most practices varied significantly by district size: a higher percentage of large districts than small or medium-sized districts restricted marketing of unhealthful foods and promoted healthful options. Compared with districts whose student populations were majority (>50%) non-Hispanic white, a higher percentage of districts whose student populations were minority non-Hispanic white (≤50% non-Hispanic white) prohibited advertising of soft drinks in school buildings and on school grounds, made school meal menus available to students, and provided families with information on school nutrition programs. Compared with suburban and rural districts, a higher percentage of urban districts prohibited the sale of soft drinks on school grounds and used several practices to promote healthful options. Conclusion Preliminary findings showing significant associations between district demographics and marketing policies and practices can be used to help states direct resources, training, and technical assistance to address food and beverage marketing and promotion to districts most in need of improvement. PMID:27978408
Merlo, Caitlin L; Michael, Shannon; Brener, Nancy D; Coffield, Edward; Kingsley, Beverly S; Zytnick, Deena; Blanck, Heidi
2016-12-15
Foods and beverages marketed in schools are typically of poor nutritional value. School districts may adopt policies and practices to restrict marketing of unhealthful foods and to promote healthful choices. Students' exposure to marketing practices differ by school demographics, but these differences have not yet been examined by district characteristics. We analyzed data from the 2012 School Health Policies and Practices Study to examine how food and beverage marketing and promotion policies and practices varied by district characteristics such as metropolitan status, size, and percentage of non-Hispanic white students. Most practices varied significantly by district size: a higher percentage of large districts than small or medium-sized districts restricted marketing of unhealthful foods and promoted healthful options. Compared with districts whose student populations were majority (>50%) non-Hispanic white, a higher percentage of districts whose student populations were minority non-Hispanic white (≤50% non-Hispanic white) prohibited advertising of soft drinks in school buildings and on school grounds, made school meal menus available to students, and provided families with information on school nutrition programs. Compared with suburban and rural districts, a higher percentage of urban districts prohibited the sale of soft drinks on school grounds and used several practices to promote healthful options. Preliminary findings showing significant associations between district demographics and marketing policies and practices can be used to help states direct resources, training, and technical assistance to address food and beverage marketing and promotion to districts most in need of improvement.
DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)
Goggio Borgeson, Merrian; Zimring, Mark
This guide focuses on clean energy financing options for school administrators, facility managers, and other K-12 school decision makers who are considering investments in high performance school projects. This guide explicitly focuses on comprehensive energy upgrades, those that involve multiple measures and are targeted toward achieving significant energy savings. Successful implementation of clean energy upgrades in schools is a matter of understanding the opportunity, making the commitment, and creatively tapping into available financing. This guide attempts to provide the foundation needed for successful projects in U.S. schools. It walks through the financing options available to K-12 schools and provides casemore » studies of six school districts from around the country.« less
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Marion, Scott F.; Vander Els, Jonathan; Leather, Paul
2017-01-01
In New Hampshire, a new performance assessment system focuses on reciprocal accountability and shared leadership among teachers and leaders at the school, district, and state levels. This concept of reciprocal accountability, developed by school improvement expert Richard Elmore, is at the core of New Hampshire's Performance Assessment of…
Improving the Physical and Social Environment of School: A Question of Equity
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Uline, Cynthia L.; Wolsey, Thomas DeVere; Tschannen-Moran, Megan; Lin, Chii-Dean
2010-01-01
This study explored the interplay between quality facilities and school climate, charting the effects of facility conditions on student and teacher attitudes, behaviors, and performance within schools slated for renovations in a large metropolitan school district. The research applied a school leadership-building design model to explore how six…
Beyond Averages: School Quality in Denver Public Schools
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Ooms, Alexander
2014-01-01
Since 2009, academic outcomes for students in Denver Public Schools (DPS) have slowly improved. The primary mechanism for increasing academic performance lies within the district's schools, and on an aggregate level Denver has seen a substantial rise in both the number of quality schools and the percentage of students they serve. Every child…
Push Is on to Add Time to School Day, Year
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Fleming, Nora
2011-01-01
Policymakers are promoting expanded learning time to help low-performing students, but the know-how and resources for implementation are lacking. Providence's expanded-school-day pilot is a partnership between the school district and the Providence After School Alliance, a nonprofit that manages after-school programs for low-income students in…
School Improvement Grants: Progress Report from America's Great City Schools
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Council of the Great City Schools, 2015
2015-01-01
This report measures trends in performance among urban schools receiving federal School Improvement Grant (SIG) awards as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). The Council of the Great City Schools aims to document how member districts of the Council of the Great City Schools implemented SIG and specifically what…
School-Central Office Relationships in Evidence Use: Understanding Evidence Use as a Systems Problem
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Honig, Meredith I.; Venkateswaran, Nitya
2012-01-01
Research on evidence use in school districts overwhelmingly focuses within schools on how school staff work with evidence including student performance data, research, and information about teaching quality. While important, this focus on schools reflects a mismatch with federal and state policies that demand not only that school staff work with…
Drawing the Line: Student Reassignment Policies in South Carolina
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Simmons, Naomi Rachel
2013-01-01
This study investigates the complex nature of student reassignment plans developed between 2006 and 2008 in three South Carolina school districts: York School District 3, Dorchester School District 2, and Greenville School District. The study is guided by the following research question: How are the district policies for student reassignment…
Systematic Research and Evaluation in a Rural Pennsylvania School District.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Leopold, Greg; And Others
This report summarizes the evaluation of a rural school district in Pennsylvania and offers recommendations reflecting the district's goals for school improvement and construction. Specifically, the objectives of the study were to identify curricular needs of the district and individual schools; review and assess district facilities with respect…
School District Mergers: What One District Learned
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Kingston, Kathleen
2009-01-01
Throughout the planning process for a school district merger in a northwestern Pennsylvania school district, effective communication proved to be a challenge. Formed in 1932, this school district of approximately 1400 students was part of a utopian community; one established by a transportation system's corporation that was a major industrial…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Gipson, Frances Marie
2012-01-01
Federal, state, and local agencies face challenges organizing resources that create the conditions necessary to create, sustain, and replicate effective high performing schools. Knowing that leadership does impact achievement outcomes and that school districts tackle growing numbers of sanctioned Program Improvement schools, a distributed…
Community Organizing for School Reform in New York City.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Mediratta, Kavitha
This paper examines school reform via community organizing in New York City's lowest performing public school districts. It summarizes findings from a national study on community organizing for school reform, profiling 10 community organizing groups. In 2000, researchers conducted surveys of and interviews with all NYC groups currently engaged in…
Performance Evaluation and Accountability for School Psychologists: Challenges and Opportunities
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Morrison, Julie Q.
2013-01-01
The call for school psychologists to demonstrate accountability in the evaluation of services at the individual, group, and system levels comes at a time when school districts nationally are pursuing personnel evaluation models that link teachers' instructional practices to student achievement. School psychologists have an opportunity to take a…
A Leadership Behavior Study of African American Middle School Principals in South Carolina
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Dean, Mark D.
2009-01-01
An era of high stakes accountability has expanded the necessity for school districts to secure principals with leadership behaviors that encourage successful academic performance. School leaders are sought to deliver practices that guide and empower entire school communities through unprecedented times of educational change. Research studies…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Bao, D. H.; Romeo, George C.; Harvey, Roberta
2010-01-01
This study examines the relationship between educational effectiveness, as measured by the New Jersey High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA), and funding of school districts based on socioeconomic classification. Results indicate there is a strong relationship between performance in HSPA, socioeconomic classification, and the different sources…
Wang, Li Yan; O'Brien, Mary Jane; Maughan, Erin D
2016-11-01
This paper describes a user-friendly, Excel spreadsheet model and two data collection instruments constructed by the authors to help states and districts perform cost-benefit analyses of school nursing services delivered by full-time school nurses. Prior to applying the model, states or districts need to collect data using two forms: "Daily Nurse Data Collection Form" and the "Teacher Survey." The former is used to record daily nursing activities, including number of student health encounters, number of medications administered, number of student early dismissals, and number of medical procedures performed. The latter is used to obtain estimates for the time teachers spend addressing student health issues. Once inputs are entered in the model, outputs are automatically calculated, including program costs, total benefits, net benefits, and benefit-cost ratio. The spreadsheet model, data collection tools, and instructions are available at the NASN website ( http://www.nasn.org/The/CostBenefitAnalysis ).
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
LaFee, Scott
2002-01-01
Describes the use of data-driven decision-making in four school districts: Plainfield Public Schools, Plainfield, New Jersey; Palo Alto Unified School District, Palo Alto, California; Francis Howell School District in eastern Missouri, northwest of St. Louis; and Rio Rancho Public Schools, near Albuquerque, New Mexico. Includes interviews with the…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Hoffman, Pamela K.; Davey, Cynthia S.; Larson, Nicole; Grannon, Katherine Y.; Hanson, Carlie; Nanney, Marilyn S.
2016-01-01
Weight-related outcomes were examined among high school students in Minnesota public school districts according to the quality of district wellness policies. Wellness policy strength and comprehensiveness were scored using the Wellness School Assessment Tool (WellSAT) for 325 Minnesota public school districts in 2013. The associations between…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Council of the Great City Schools, 2014
2014-01-01
In 2002 the "Council of the Great City Schools" and its members set out to develop performance measures that could be used to improve business operations in urban public school districts. The Council launched the "Performance Measurement and Benchmarking Project" to achieve these objectives. The purposes of the project was to:…
Performance Contracting: A Forgotten Experiment in School Privatization.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Ascher, Carol
1996-01-01
During the early 1970s, over 150 school districts and several states contracted with private companies to deliver instruction, and the Nixon Administration initiated a vast privatization field experiment in Texarkana. None of these performance contracting experiments significantly improved instruction. Instead, they raised issues of staffing,…
Topical Reports: Sustainable Design for Schools.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Fox, Anne W.
This document presents several reports on the practical applications of sustainable design and schools; it includes information about student performance and sustainable design features involving lighting, acoustics, air quality, and student well-being. Three case studies (Washington's Bainbridge Island School District, Texas' Roy Lee Walker…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Ohio State Dept. of Education, Columbus. Div. of Special Education.
This report describes three model demonstration projects in Ohio school districts which focused on strategies for identifying students gifted in visual and performing arts and delivering hands-on arts education and appreciation experiences. Presented for each program is information on: identifying characteristics (district, location, school…
Does Shortening the School Week Impact Student Performance? Evidence from the Four-Day School Week
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Anderson, D. Mark; Walker, Mary Beth
2015-01-01
School districts use a variety of policies to close budget gaps and stave off teacher layoffs and furloughs. More schools are implementing four-day school weeks to reduce overhead and transportation costs. The four-day week requires substantial schedule changes as schools must increase the length of their school day to meet minimum instructional…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Reardon, Ryan Turner
2008-01-01
The purpose of this non-experimental correlational study was to determine the relationship between the type of attendance policies in the high schools of the 67 Florida school districts, the size of the school district (number of high school students), the socioeconomic status SES) of the school district, and the average daily attendance rate of…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Davis, James S., Jr.
2013-01-01
This exploration focuses on school leaders' perceptions of school counselors as leaders and their involvement with district wide change. This study explores school counselor leadership, school counselors' role in district level change, and barriers to school counselor leadership. This is a qualitative study utilizing grounded theory design.…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Barker, Bruce O.; Muse, Ivan D.
A 1982-83 survey produced data used to compare 17 small/rural K-12 New Mexico school districts (900 students or fewer) with 642 similar districts nationwide. Of New Mexico's 88 school districts, 43 were identified as qualifying (48.9%, enrolling 16,648 students), for comparison to 4,125 similar districts nationwide. A questionnaire mailed to…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Dombrowski, Richard J.
In 1983, Channahon School District 17 in Illinois was $1.3 million in debt. Real estate taxes constituted the school district's chief source of revenue, but because the state's oil industry kept its assessed valuations below the actual value of its property through the use of experts and lawyers, the school district was denied much of its income.…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Al dakeel, Taghreed M.; Almannie, Mohamed A.
2015-01-01
The general school district of Riyadh is one of largest in the country of (45) school districts in Saudi Arabia. The school districts play an important roles in the development of education, therefore the objective of the study is to examine the roles of the management in the school districts to see if it is achieving competitive advantage. After…
Chriqui, Jamie F; Eyler, Amy; Carnoske, Cheryl; Slater, Sandy
2013-01-01
To examine the influence of state laws and district policies on district-wide elementary school and middle school practices related to physical education (PE) time and the percentage of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) time during PE. Multivariate, cross-sectional analysis of state laws, district wellness and PE policies, and district PE practices for school year 2010-2011 controlling for district-level urbanicity, region, size, race/ethnicity of students, and socioeconomic status and clustered on state. One hundred ninety-five public school districts located in 42 states. District-level PE coordinators for the included districts who responded to an online survey. Minutes and days of PE per week and percent time spent in MVPA during PE time. District PE coordinators reported significantly less PE time than national standards-82.9 and 189.6 minutes at the elementary school and middle school levels, respectively. Physical education was provided an average of 2.5 and 3.7 days per week, respectively; and the percentage of MVPA time in PE was 64.4% and 65.7%, respectively. At the elementary school level, districts in either states with laws governing PE time or in a state and district with a law/policy reported significantly more days of PE (0.63 and 0.67 additional days, respectively), and districts in states with PE time laws reported 18 more minutes of PE per week. At the middle school level, state laws were associated with 0.73 more days of PE per week. Neither state laws nor district policies were positively associated with percent MVPA time in PE. State laws and district policies can influence district-level PE practices-particularly those governing the frequency and duration of PE-although opportunities exist to strengthen PE-related laws, policies, and practices.
Technology Finds Its Place in Silicon Valley Schools
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Hundley, Paula; Scigliano, Marie
2012-01-01
Technology today is poised to usher in the best of times. Exploring what other districts do highlights the common themes as well as the unique challenges. Three very different districts in Silicon Valley--Portola Valley School District, Campbell Union School District and San Jose Unified School District--explain the strategies they use to enhance…
Small Districts in Big Trouble: How Four Arizona School Systems Responded to Charter Competition.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Hess, Frederick; Maranto, Robert; Milliman, Scott
2001-01-01
Examined the responses to charter school competition of four small Arizona school districts. Overall, districts lost students to charter schools because they did not satisfy significant constituencies. Their responses depended on overall enrollment trends, quality of charter competition, quality of district leadership, and district size. Responses…
The Impact of Literacy Intervention on Academic Performance of Third Grade At-Risk Students
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Williams, Vernita
2015-01-01
Third grade at-risk students in Wilson County Schools, Wilson, NC continuously perform below the state average on the North Carolina Third Grade Reading End-of-Grade test. Leaders in the Wilson County Schools school district implemented a literacy pull-out intervention program for third grade at-risk students as a strategy to improve reading…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Council of the Great City Schools, 2008
2008-01-01
This report describes statistical indicators developed by the Council of the Great City Schools and its member districts to measure big-city school performance on a range of operational functions in business, finance, human resources and technology. The report also presents data city-by-city on those indicators. This is the second time that…
School District Crisis Preparedness, Response, and Recovery Plans - United States, 2012.
Silverman, Brenda; Chen, Brenda; Brener, Nancy; Kruger, Judy; Krishna, Nevin; Renard, Paul; Romero-Steiner, Sandra; Avchen, Rachel Nonkin
2016-09-16
The unique characteristics of children dictate the need for school-based all-hazards response plans during natural disasters, emerging infectious diseases, and terrorism (1-3). Schools are a critical community institution serving a vulnerable population that must be accounted for in public health preparedness plans; prepared schools are adopting policies and plans for crisis preparedness, response, and recovery (2-4). The importance of having such plans in place is underscored by the development of a new Healthy People 2020 objective (PREP-5) to "increase the percentage of school districts that require schools to include specific topics in their crisis preparedness, response, and recovery plans" (5). Because decisions about such plans are usually made at the school district level, it is important to examine district-level policies and practices. Although previous reports have provided national estimates of the percentage of districts with policies and practices in place (6), these estimates have not been analyzed by U.S. Census region* and urbanicity.(†) Using data from the 2012 School Health Policies and Practices Study (SHPPS), this report examines policies and practices related to school district preparedness, response, and recovery. In general, districts in the Midwest were less likely to require schools to include specific topics in their crisis preparedness plans than districts in the Northeast and South. Urban districts tended to be more likely than nonurban districts to require specific topics in school preparedness plans. Southern districts tended to be more likely than districts in other regions to engage with partners when developing plans. No differences in district collaboration (with the exception of local fire department engagement) were observed by level of urbanicity. School-based preparedness planning needs to be coordinated with interdisciplinary community partners to achieve Healthy People 2020 PREP-5 objectives for this vulnerable population.
School District Income Taxes and School Inputs: The Case of Ohio
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Nguyen-Hoang, Phuong
2014-01-01
This study is the first to explore the relationship between school district income taxes and school inputs (expenditures and student-teacher ratios) using Ohio as a case study. The study employed reduced-form expenditure functions on a data panel of 609 school districts between 1990 and 2010. Treating for the endogeneity of school district income…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Izu, JoAnn
Drawing on the Los Angeles Unified School District's experiences with charter schools, this brief highlights the difficulties in balancing the twin needs of charter-school autonomy and accountability, and their implications for the way in which charter schools and districts can work together. It identifies key challenges in district-school…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Sirinides, Philip; Supovitz, Jonathan; Tognatta, Namrata; May, Henry
2013-01-01
Beginning in 2005, the GE Foundation initiated a commitment of expertise and financial resources to a set of urban school districts to improve public education and enhance student achievement in mathematics and science. This report analyzes the impacts of the GE Foundation commitment to the partner districts by examining trends in student…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Callaway, Roberta F.
2017-01-01
This study was conducted in the fall of 2015 in a large, urban school district located in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. There are 33 elementary schools, one kindergarten through eighth grade school, eight middle schools, and five high schools in the district; three of the five high schools in the district participated. The district…
Development of Malayalam Handwriting Scale for School Students in Kerala
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Gafoor, K. Abdul; Naseer, A. R.
2015-01-01
With a view to support instruction, formative and summative assessment and to provide model handwriting performance for students to compare their own performance, a Malayalam handwriting scale is developed. Data from 2640 school students belonging to Malappuram, Palakkad and Kozhikode districts, sampled by taking 240 students per each grade…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Houston Independent School District, 2013
2013-01-01
The Apollo 20 project was launched during the 2010-2011 school year to accelerate Houston Independent School District's (HISD's) efforts to improve student performance in every school and close the achievement gap districtwide. This partnership with EdLabs at Harvard University incorporates best practices from successful public and charter schools…
Using Data to Realign Resources
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Barbour, Catherine
2012-01-01
Schools and districts across the country are being subjected to some of the fiercest budget cuts in recent history, even as principals are held increasingly accountable for significantly improving student achievement, particularly in schools labeled "persistently low-achieving." For the 5,000 lowest-performing schools, there is the…
Reforming Districts: How Districts Support School Reform. A Research Report. Document R-03-6
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
McLaughlin, Milbrey; Talbert, Joan
2003-01-01
School districts have participated in multiple rounds of education reform activity in the past few decades, yet few have made headway on system-wide school improvement. This paper addresses the questions of whether districts matter for school reform progress and what successful "reforming" districts do to achieve system change and to…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Wiener, Steve
Soaring values of agricultural land have created inequities in funding between urban and rural school districts in Minnesota. The state's Foundation Aid to school districts is formulated so that districts of high property valuation receive less Foundation Aid than those districts with low property valuation. In recent years inflation has had…
School Staffing and Performance Management in Newark Public Schools. Executive Summary
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
New Teacher Project, 2009
2009-01-01
In the winter and spring of 2009, The New Teacher Project (TNTP) partnered with Newark Public Schools (NPS) to investigate the impact of the school district's policies and practices on the ability of schools to build and maintain strong instructional teams. TNTP's analysis of policy and practice in NPS, funded by The Prudential Foundation, reveals…
Alaska's Public Schools: 2013-2014 Report Card to the Public
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Alaska Department of Education & Early Development, 2014
2014-01-01
This statewide "Report Card to the Public" is published in accordance with Alaska Statute 14.03.120 for the school year 2013-2014. Under state law, each school district is required to report information about its performance. Public knowledge of the school system is an important part of Alaska's school accountability system. This report…
The Interdependence of Sixth Graders' School Attitudes and Academic Performance.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Glick, Oren
In this study, data were obtained from sixth grade students on attitudes toward each of four aspects of the school experience and on academic achievement. Data were available from 159 males and 199 females from 17 sixth grade classrooms in 17 schools within the Kansas City school district. Attitudes toward school were measured with the Pupil…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Faginski-Stark, Erica; Casavant, Christopher; Collins, William; McCandless, Jason; Tencza, Marilyn
2012-01-01
Recent federal and state mandates have tasked school systems to move beyond principal evaluation as a bureaucratic function and to re-imagine it as a critical component to improve principal performance and compel school renewal. This qualitative study investigated the district leaders' and principals' perceptions of the performance evaluation…
Performance Assessment of State Senior High School Teachers Aged 56 Years and Above
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Yusrizal; Harun, Cut Zahri; Husen; Iqbal, Muhammad
2018-01-01
This research aimed at determining the level of performance of state senior high school (Sekolah Menengah Atas Negeri abbreviated as SMAN) teachers aged 56 years and older. The research population was all SMAN teachers aged 56 years and older in Banda Aceh Municipality, Districts of Aceh Besar, Pidie and Pidie Jaya. Performance assessment…
Levels of Job Satisfaction and Performance of Sports Officers in Lagos State Secondary Schools
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Onifade, Ademola; Keinde, Idou; Kehinde, Eunice
2009-01-01
The purpose of this paper was to examine the relationship between job satisfaction levels of sports officers and sports performance of secondary schools in Lagos State. Data were collected from 200 subjects across 10 Local Education Districts. Job Descriptive Index was used to determine job satisfaction while performance in the Principals' Soccer…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Jones-Mason, Keely S.
2012-01-01
In an effort to improve academic performance for students receiving special education services, a large urban school district in Tennessee has implemented Integrated Service Delivery Model. The purpose of this study was to compare the performance of students receiving instruction in self-contained classrooms to the performance of students…
The Principals' Perspective of Sustainable Partnerships in New York City's New School Initiative
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Klein, Robert
2010-01-01
New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg and school's Chancellor Joel Klein made the creation of new schools an essential part of their Children First reform policy. In September 2002, 13 high schools opened replacing the lowest performing large high schools throughout the City. As of 2010, more than 400 new district and charter schools are in…
Merlo, Caitlin L; Michael, Shannon; Brener, Nancy D; Blanck, Heidi
2018-06-07
State agencies play a critical role in providing school districts with guidance and technical assistance on school nutrition issues, including food and beverage marketing practices. We examined associations between state-level guidance and the policies and practices in school districts regarding food and beverage marketing and promotion. State policy guidance was positively associated with districts prohibiting advertisements for junk food or fast food restaurants on school property. Technical assistance from states was negatively associated with 2 district practices to restrict marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages, but positively associated with 1 practice to promote healthy options. These findings may help inform the guidance that states provide to school districts and help identify which districts may need additional assistance to address marketing and promotion practices.
Health, safety and environment conditions in primary schools of Northern Iran.
Behzadkolaee, Seyed Mohammad Asadi; Mirmohammadi, Seyed Taghi; Yazdani, Jamshid; Gorji, Ali Morad Heidari; Toosi, Ameneh; Rokni, Mohammad; Gorji, Mohammad Ali Heidari
2015-01-01
People spend a considerable part of their childhood time in the schools, a phase that coincides with their physical and mental growth. A healthy educational environment is vital to student's health and wellbeing. This study is a descriptive study conducted in 100 primary schools (both state and nonprofit schools) from Sari's Districts 1 and 2 in Iran. Sampling was performed by census and data were collected using the standard questionnaire by direct interview. Data were analyzed by Excel and SPSS software (Version 20.0. IBM Corp, Armonk), NY: IBM Corp using independent numerical T2 testing. Significant relationship was observed between the kind of schools (P = 0.045) and their locations (P = 0.024), however the health, safety and environment (HSE) ratings among boys only versus girls only schools were similar (P = 0.159). Interestingly private and nongovernment schools and primary schools from Sari's districts one had consistently higher HSE ratings. The differential and higher HSE ratings in primary schools run by Private organizations and primary schools from Sari's districts one could be due to manager's awareness and implementation of recommended HSE standards, schools neglecting and overlooking these standards had lower HSE ratings. It is necessary that schools with lower HSE ratings are made aware of the guidelines and necessary infrastructures allocated to improve their HSE ratings.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Barr, Jason M.; Sadovnik, Alan R.; Visconti, Louisa
2006-01-01
This article compares student achievement of fourth graders in charter schools and district public schools in Newark, New Jersey. We find that Newark and New Jersey's charter schools mirror the educational inequalities of the state as a whole, as well as its Abbott Districts. The data indicate that charter schools are similar to district urban…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Busch, Douglas M.
2012-01-01
As school district revenues are reduced by state allocating agencies, local school district administrators and school boards frequently evaluate alternative sources of possible revenue. One emerging source of revenue that many school districts explore is a local education foundation. Local education foundations are 501(c)(3) nonprofit…
Abbott Students Attending Charter Schools: Funding Disparities and Legal Implications
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Bulkley, Katrina
2007-01-01
Most of New Jersey's charter schools are located in the state's poorer, urban school districts, or "Abbott" districts, and exclusively serve students from those communities. A number of other schools are located outside of the Abbott districts but enroll students from these districts. Specifically, of the 50 charter schools operating in…
Michigan School Privatization Survey 2009
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Hohman, James M.; Imhoff, Eric R.
2009-01-01
With Michigan's public school districts facing a decline in per-pupil funding, more districts are contracting out for at least one of the three major school support services--food, custodial and transportation--than ever before. This year's survey of school districts found that 44.6 percent of all Michigan school districts contract out for at…
Culture: The Missing Link to Learning
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Cross, Nathan; Howard, Kathleen; Pearson, Carl
2013-01-01
A high functioning school and district culture is an essential underpinning to all improvement efforts. Yet school and district culture can be difficult to assess. Culture is the cornerstone of all good districts and schools. It is the foundation for all school improvement efforts. As one looks deeper into the culture of a school or district, one…
School Choice, Student Mobility, and School Quality: Evidence from Post-Katrina New Orleans
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Welsh, Richard O.; Duque, Matthew; McEachin, Andrew
2016-01-01
In recent decades, school choice policies predicated on student mobility have gained prominence as urban districts address chronically low-performing schools. However, scholars have highlighted equity concerns related to choice policies. The case of post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans provides an opportunity to examine student mobility patterns in…
Instructional Expenditures and Student Achievement: A Multiyear Statewide Analysis
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Cullen, Maureen; Polnick, Barbara; Robles-Piña, Rebecca; Slate, John R.
2015-01-01
In this investigation, we examined the extent to which instructional expenditures were related to student academic achievement for students enrolled in Texas public schools for the 2005-2006 through the 2009-2010 school years. Student performance on the state-mandated assessments for all school districts in Texas for these five school years was…
Improving the Implementation and Effectiveness of Out-of-School-Time Tutoring
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Heinrich, Carolyn J.; Burch, Patricia; Good, Annalee; Acosta, Rudy; Cheng, Huiping; Dillender, Marcus; Kirshbaum, Christi; Nisar, Hiren; Stewart, Mary
2014-01-01
School districts are spending millions on tutoring outside regular school day hours for economically and academically disadvantaged students in need of extra academic assistance. Under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), parents of children in persistently low-performing schools were allowed to choose their child's tutoring provider, and together with…
Accountability Effects of Integrating Technology in Evolving Professional Development Schools.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Denton, Jon J.; Manus, Alice L.
This analysis aimed at determining whether implemented technology systems and staff development with those systems at professional development schools have affected the academic performance of learners. Eight Texas elementary and secondary schools that in 1994-95 enrolled 5,337 students across 5 school districts comprised the sample for the study.…
AEL Continuous School Improvement Questionnaire. User Manual and Technical Report.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Meehan, Merrill L.; Cowley, Kimberly S.; Craig, James R.; Balow, Nancy; Childers, Robert D.
The Continuous School Improvement Questionnaire (CSIQ) developed by the AEL helps a school staff gauge its performance on six dimensions related to continuous school improvement. Each member of the staff responds to the CSIQ individually. Although results might be used at the district or regional level, the most widely intended unit for applying…
Better Data, Better Decisions: Informing School Choosers to Improve Education Markets
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Valant, Jon
2014-01-01
School choice sits at the center of the education reform agenda. The most recent national study from Stanford University's Center for Research on Education Outcomes found that charter school students perform comparably in math and better in reading than their peers in traditional district schools. Often lost in the growing national enthusiasm…
Virtual Schools in the U.S. 2013: Politics, Performance, Policy, and Research Evidence
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Miron, Gary; Horvitz, Brian; Gulosino, Charisse; Huerta, Luis; Rice, Jennifer King; Shafer, Sheryl Rankin; Cuban, Larry
2013-01-01
This national study, which comprehensively reviews 311 virtual schools operating in the United States, finds serious and systemic problems with the nation's full-time cyber schools. Despite virtual schools' track record of students falling behind their peers academically or dropping-out at higher rates, states and districts continue to expand…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Filsinger, Lora C.
2012-01-01
As schools and school districts continue to face budget reductions, school officials must thoroughly evaluate and determine from which programs to decrease funding. Athletic programs are one area that has received much scrutiny for receiving these cuts. If research reveals a significant relationship between athletic involvement and academic…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Gray, Lucinda; Bitterman, Amy; Goldring, Rebecca
2013-01-01
This report presents selected findings from the Public School District Data File of the 2011-12 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). SASS is a nationally representative sample survey of public and private K-12 schools, principals, and teachers in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. School districts associated with public schools and library…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Benzaquen, Eitan Yacov
2016-01-01
In April 2008, the Wisconsin Erie School District attempted and failed to pass a school bond referendum to renovate its high school. In November 2008, again the school district did not pass a referendum. Interestingly, in the 2009-2010 school year, the district was successful in passing a bond referendum. Although the original bond measure called…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Dreier, William H.; Pilgrim, Ronald
In Winnebago County, Iowa, the earliest school district was the township, organized with ungraded one-room schools. The town of Buffalo Center worked with its township school district to become, in 1895, a town independent school district with its service area being the township. In 1896 the new district offered graded elementary and high schools.…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Koon, Sharon; Petscher, Yaacov
2016-01-01
During the 2013/14 school year two Florida school districts sought to develop an early warning system to identify students at risk of low performance on college readiness measures in grade 11 or 12 (such as the SAT or ACT) in order to support them with remedial coursework prior to high school graduation. The study presented in this report provides…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Eugene, Michael; Carlson, Robert; Hrowal, Heidi; Fahey, John; Ronnei, Jean; Young, Steve; Gomez, Joseph; Thomas, Michael
2007-01-01
This report describes 50 initial statistical indicators developed by the Council of the Great City Schools and its member districts to measure big-city school performance on a range of operational and business functions, and presents data city-by-city on those indicators. The analysis marks the first time that such indicators have been developed…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Van Boskirk, La Rita
In Nebraska, where nearly 70% of elementary school districts are rural, there is much debate about whether students from small rural schools have educational opportunities equal to those of students from town or city schools. This paper compares the performance, participation, and behavior of high school juniors who attended elementary schools in…
Elementary and Secondary Civil Rights Survey, 1984. District Summary Volumes 1 and 2.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
DBS Corp., Arlington, VA.
This 1984 survey was conducted to obtain data on the characteristics of public school students in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The 3,510 school districts selected to participate were statistically sampled from approximately 16,000 U.S. school districts, and the schools within the selected districts were subsampled: (1) all special…
Competition for Students in a Local School District
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Chisesi, Lawrence J.
2015-01-01
I study how competition played out between elementary schools in a Colorado school district. When the school board approved new schools without catchments, schools faced with declining catchment populations responded. Some schools adapted by altering programming away from the standard district curriculum. I model a school's success in recruiting…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Northwest Evaluation Association, 2016
2016-01-01
Blue Valley, the fourth largest school district in Kansas, covers 91 square miles. More than 20,000 K-12 students attend its 34 schools ( five high schools, nine middle schools, and 20 elementary schools). Of the district's students, 8% qualify for free and reduced lunch and about 3% are English Language Learners. Blue Valley began using Measures…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Ericson, John; Silverman, Debra; Berman, Paul; Nelson, Beryl; Solomon, Debra
This report examines the operational and educational changes that school administrators attribute to charter schools. It is part of the U.S. Department of Education's 4-year study to document and analyze the charter-school movement. The study asked two questions: What changes have districts made in district operations and district education that…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Siegel, Dorothy; Zurer, Erica; Fruchter, Norm
This report reviews the second-year implementation of the New York City public school system's Performance Driven Budget (PDB) initiative. The Galaxy budgeting system that is part of the PDB initiative generates a school's budget from its table of organization, and then derives district and Central budgets by aggregating all school budgets. After…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Florida State Dept. of Education, Tallahassee.
The student performance standards of excellence in mathematics, science, social studies, and writing for Florida schools were developed cooperatively by the Florida Department of Education, local school district personnel and representatives of institutions of higher education. These standards and skills were reviewed by teachers and supervisors…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Council of the Great City Schools, 2008
2008-01-01
This report describes statistical indicators developed by the Council of the Great City Schools and its member districts to measure big-city school performance on a range of operational functions in business, finance, human resources and technology. The report also presents data city-by-city on those indicators. This is the second time that…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Simmons, Monica L.
2013-01-01
Teachers' Perceptions of their Self-Efficacy and Effects of Principal Leadership Practices on Self-Efficacy Beliefs in Low and High-Performing Elementary Schools in South Carolina (Under the direction of Dr. Vivian Brackett) Across the United States, school districts are challenged with attracting and attaining high quality teachers. Efficacious…
Elementary and Secondary Schools Civil Rights Survey, 1984. State Summaries.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
DBS Corp., Arlington, VA.
This 1984 survey was conducted to obtain data on the characteristics of public school students in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The 3,510 school districts selected to participate were statistically sampled from approximately 16,000 U.S. school districts, and the schools within the selected districts were subsampled: (1) all special…
The Condition of Rural Education in Kentucky: A Profile.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Coe, Pam; And Others
In Kentucky, 105 of 178 school districts, or 59%, are classified as rural. State law and administrative regulations presume that most school districts are both rural and isolated. The environment for rural schools in the state is heavily influenced by the fact that the majority of school districts are rural. Each school district must have a…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Kaufman, Trent E.; Grimm, Emily Dolci; Miller, Allison E.
2012-01-01
How can districts bring instructional improvement to scale within and across schools? The authors of "Collaborative School Improvement" argue that districts can play a powerful part in helping schools build the capacity to engage in inquiry-based reform--but that this effort requires a shift in districts' traditional role as a professional…
A Political Analysis of Community Influence over School Closure
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Finnigan, Kara S.; Lavner, Mark
2012-01-01
This study seeks to understand community member participation in and influence over an urban school district's school closure process. Data from interviews with School Board members, district administrators, and community members, as well as district documents and newspaper articles suggest that district administrators limited participation…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Ferguson, Ronald F.
This survey presents statistics on secondary school student culture by school district and race/ethnicity, using data from approximately forty thousand secondary school students in Minority Student Achievement Network districts. Information is presented in six areas: (1) "Family Background Resources and Living Arrangements (racial/ethnic…
Kajankova, Maria; Oswald, Jennifer M; Terranova, Lauren M; Kaplen, Michael V; Ambrose, Anne F; Spielman, Lisa A; Gordon, Wayne A
2017-06-01
By 2014, all states implemented concussion laws that schools must translate into daily practice; yet, limited knowledge exists regarding implementation of these laws. We examined the extent to which concussion management policies and procedure (P&P) documents of New York State school districts comply with the State's Concussion Awareness and Management Act (the Act). We also aimed to identify barriers to compliance. Forty-seven school districts provided P&P documents. We examined compliance with the Act and the relationship between compliance and each district's demographics. Compliance varied across school districts, with higher overall compliance in large city school districts compared to county districts. However, there was low compliance for several critical items. We found no statistically significant relationship between compliance and demographics. School districts need to increase compliance with concussion legislation to ensure the adequate implementation necessary for the law to impact health and educational outcomes. The results provide important information to individuals charged with the responsibility of implementation and ultimately reducing the negative outcomes associated with brain injuries in schools. © 2017, American School Health Association.
Kubik, Martha Y; Lytle, Leslie A; Farbakhsh, Kian
2011-01-01
The Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004 required school districts participating in the federal school meals program to establish by the start of the 2006-2007 school year policies that included nutrition guidelines for all foods sold on school campus during the school day and policy development involving key stakeholders. For many schools, policy development was done by wellness councils. This study examined the association between having a wellness council and availability of low-nutrient, energy-dense foods/beverages in school vending machines following enactment of the federal legislation. In 2006-2007, Minnesota middle (n=35) and high (n=54) school principals reported whether their school and district had a wellness council. Trained research staff observed foods/beverages in vending machines accessible to students. Low-nutrient, energy-dense foods/beverages (snacks >3 g fat or >200 calories/serving, and soda, fruit/sport drinks and reduced-fat/whole milk) were grouped into seven categories (eg, high-fat baked goods) and a food score was calculated. Higher scores indicated more low-nutrient, energy-dense vending fare. Multivariate linear regression, adjusted for school characteristics, was used to examine associations between scores and a three-category council variable (district-only; district and school; no council). Among schools, 53% had district-only councils, 38% district and school councils, and 9% had no council. Schools with both a district and school council had a significantly lower mean food score than schools without councils (P=0.03). The potential of wellness councils to impact availability of low-nutrient, energy-dense vending fare is promising. There may be an added benefit to having both a school and district council. Copyright © 2011 American Dietetic Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Henderson, Kathryn E; Falbe, Jennifer; Novak, Sarah A.; Wharton, Christopher; Long, Michael; O'Connell, Meghan L.; Fiore, Susan S.
2013-01-01
Background In 2006, all local education agencies in the United States participating in federal school meal programs were required to establish school wellness policies. The aim of this study was to document the strength and comprehensiveness of one state's written district policies using a quantitative coding tool, and test whether the strength and comprehensiveness of the written policy predicted school level implementation and practices. Methods School wellness policies from 151 Connecticut districts were evaluated using a quantitative coding system. In each district, school principal surveys were collected before and after the writing and expected implementation of wellness policies. Socio-demographic variables were assessed for each district, including enrollment, population density, political climate, racial composition and socio-economic status. Changes in school-level policy implementation before and after the federal wellness policy requirement were compared across districts by wellness policy strength, and policies were compared based on district-level demographic factors. Results Statewide, fuller implementation of nutrition and physical activity policies at the school level was reported after adoption of written policies in 2006. Districts with stronger, more comprehensive policies were more successful in implementing those policies at the school level. Some socio-demographic characteristics predicted the strength of wellness policies; larger, urban districts and districts with a greater ratio of registered Democrats to Republicans wrote stronger policies. Conclusions Written school wellness policies have the potential to promote significant improvements in the school environment. Future regulation of school wellness policies should focus on the importance of writing strong and comprehensive policies. PMID:22568461
Turner, Lindsey; Chriqui, Jamie F.; Chaloupka, Frank J.
2012-01-01
Objectives We examined whether state laws and district policies pertaining to nutritional restrictions on school fundraisers were associated with school policies as reported by administrators in a nationally-representative sample of United States public elementary schools. Methods We gathered data on school-level fundraising policies via a mail-back survey during the 2009–10 and 2010–11 school years. Surveys were received from 1,278 public elementary schools (response rate = 60.9%). Data were also gathered on corresponding school district policies and state laws. After removing cases with missing data, the sample size for analysis was 1,215 schools. Results After controlling for school characteristics, school policies were consistently associated with state laws and district policies, both those pertaining to fundraising generally, as well as specific restrictions on the sale of candy and soda in fundraisers (all Odds Ratios >2.0 and Ps<.05). However, even where district policies and state laws required fundraising restrictions, school policies were not uniformly present; school policies were also in place at only 55.8% of these schools, but were more common at schools in the West (77.1%) and at majority-Latino schools (71.4%), indicating uneven school-level implementation of district policy and state law. Conclusions District policies and state laws were associated with a higher prevalence of elementary school-level fundraising policies, but many schools that were subject to district policies and state laws did not have school-level restrictions in place, suggesting the need for further attention to factors hindering policy implementation in schools. PMID:23166788
Turner, Lindsey; Chriqui, Jamie F; Chaloupka, Frank J
2012-01-01
We examined whether state laws and district policies pertaining to nutritional restrictions on school fundraisers were associated with school policies as reported by administrators in a nationally-representative sample of United States public elementary schools. We gathered data on school-level fundraising policies via a mail-back survey during the 2009-10 and 2010-11 school years. Surveys were received from 1,278 public elementary schools (response rate = 60.9%). Data were also gathered on corresponding school district policies and state laws. After removing cases with missing data, the sample size for analysis was 1,215 schools. After controlling for school characteristics, school policies were consistently associated with state laws and district policies, both those pertaining to fundraising generally, as well as specific restrictions on the sale of candy and soda in fundraisers (all Odds Ratios >2.0 and Ps<.05). However, even where district policies and state laws required fundraising restrictions, school policies were not uniformly present; school policies were also in place at only 55.8% of these schools, but were more common at schools in the West (77.1%) and at majority-Latino schools (71.4%), indicating uneven school-level implementation of district policy and state law. District policies and state laws were associated with a higher prevalence of elementary school-level fundraising policies, but many schools that were subject to district policies and state laws did not have school-level restrictions in place, suggesting the need for further attention to factors hindering policy implementation in schools.
Student Aims Performance in a Predominately Hispanic District
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Chebultz, Lance
2012-01-01
School districts in the United States have undergone large changes over the last decade to accommodate No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Arizona accommodated NCLB through Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS). Expectations were established for all students, varying by group of students based on grade, special education status, free/reduced…
Getting Classroom Observations Right
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Whitehurst, Grover; Chingos, Matthew M.; Lindquist, Katharine
2015-01-01
This article contributes to the body of knowledge on teacher evaluation systems by examining the actual design and performance of new teacher-evaluation systems in four school districts that are at the forefront of the effort to evaluate teachers meaningfully. The authors find first that the ratings assigned teachers by the districts'…
Increasing Male Academic Achievement
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Jackson, Barbara Talbert
2008-01-01
The No Child Left Behind legislation has brought greater attention to the academic performance of American youth. Its emphasis on student achievement requires a closer analysis of assessment data by school districts. To address the findings, educators must seek strategies to remedy failing results. In a mid-Atlantic district of the Unites States,…
Collaborative Edge: How Helping Others Helps You
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Hargreaves, Andy; Shirley, Dennis; Harris, Alma; Boyle, Alan
2010-01-01
Teachers might be working significantly more with one another, but principals are not. Superintendents might bring principals together for district meetings or even to expose their performance results to colleagues in public, but principal collaboration is too often trumped by district control. Even worse, more and more schools and their…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Putnam, Robert F.; Luiselli, James K.; Sennett, Kenneth; Malonson, Joanne
2002-01-01
Evaluation of out-of-district special education placement costs in the 15 largest Massachusetts public school districts found the criterion school district (which had developed a system-wide approach to behavioral intervention) had the lowest per capita cost, lowest percentage of total school budget consumed by out-of-district placements, and the…
Alternative Fuels Data Center: Minnesota School District Finds Cost
Savings, Cold-Weather Reliability with Propane Buses Minnesota School District Finds Cost Center: Minnesota School District Finds Cost Savings, Cold-Weather Reliability with Propane Buses on Facebook Tweet about Alternative Fuels Data Center: Minnesota School District Finds Cost Savings, Cold
Alternative Fuels Data Center: Mesa Unified School District Reaps Economic
and Environmental Benefits with Propane Buses Mesa Unified School District Reaps Economic and School District Reaps Economic and Environmental Benefits with Propane Buses on Facebook Tweet about Alternative Fuels Data Center: Mesa Unified School District Reaps Economic and Environmental Benefits with
Estimating the Efficiency of Michigan's Rural and Urban Public School Districts
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Maranowski, Rita
2012-01-01
This study examined student achievement in Michigan public school districts to determine if rural school districts are demonstrating greater financial efficiency by producing higher levels of student achievement than school districts in other geographic locations with similar socioeconomics. Three models were developed using multiple regression…
Stepping stones: Principal career paths and school outcomes.
Béteille, Tara; Kalogrides, Demetra; Loeb, Susanna
2012-07-01
More than one out of every five principals leaves their school each year. In some cases, these career changes are driven by the choices of district leadership. In other cases, principals initiate the move, often demonstrating preferences to work in schools with higher achieving students from more advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. Principals often use schools with many poor or low-achieving students as stepping stones to what they view as more desirable assignments. We use longitudinal data from one large urban school district to study the relationship between principal turnover and school outcomes. We find that principal turnover is, on average, detrimental to school performance. Frequent turnover of school leadership results in lower teacher retention and lower student achievement gains. Leadership changes are particularly harmful for high poverty schools, low-achieving schools, and schools with many inexperienced teachers. These schools not only suffer from high rates of principal turnover but are also unable to attract experienced successors. The negative effect of leadership changes can be mitigated when vacancies are filled by individuals with prior experience leading other schools. However, the majority of new principals in high poverty and low-performing schools lack prior leadership experience and leave when more attractive positions become available in other schools. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Council of the Great City Schools, 2003
2003-01-01
This report, from the Council of the Great City Schools' "Cities Building Cities" program, examines Detroit Public Schools' instructional program. The main goals of the Council's review were to: (1) compare Detroit with other urban school districts that were raising student performance; (2) propose strategies--based on what was working…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Fagioli, Loris P.
2014-01-01
This study compared a value-added approach to school accountability to the currently used metrics of accountability in California of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) and Academic Performance Index (API). Five-year student panel data (N?=?53,733) from 29 elementary schools in a large California school district were used to address the research…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Hurlburt, Steven; Therriault, Susan Bowles; Le Floch, Kerstin Carlson
2012-01-01
The School Improvement Grants (SIG) program was first authorized in 2001 under Title I section 1003(g) of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and provides formula-based federal funds to states that then competitively award these funds to districts applying for SIG on behalf of their low-performing schools. These schools use the funds…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Matsudaira, Jordan D.; Hosek, Adrienne; Walsh, Elias
2012-01-01
We examine the effects of Title I on school behavior, resources, and academic performance using a rich set of school finance and student-level achievement data from one large urban school district using a regression discontinuity design. We find that Title I eligibility raises Federal revenues of schools by about $460 per student. This is…
The Superintendent's Eighth Annual Report on School Performance and Improvement in Hawaii, 1997.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Gans, Thomas
This report contains collective data on Hawaii's schools, showing trends over time and, where appropriate, comparisons with data from other states. It includes data from 246 public schools and 7 school districts for the 1996-97 school year. In 1996-97, enrollment growth, which had exceeded 1.5% for 5 years, declined sharply to 1%. Dropout rates…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Langenkamp, Amy G.
2010-01-01
The transition to high school is a critical stage in students' academic trajectories and can be especially difficult for middle school students who struggle academically. Starting high school on a low academic track and with low academic performance often leads to dropping out of high school. This study investigates what might protect academically…
Assessment! The Foundation to This Performance/Field-Based Teacher Preparation Program.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Schmitz, Steve; Veilbig, Cindy; Fitch, Lanny; Alawiye, Osman
This report describes the assessment practices of the undergraduate performance and field-based teacher preparation programs of Central Washington University. The undergraduate program involves 2-year programs for elementary school teacher candidates in 3 school districts. Portfolios are used in this program as a means of authentic assessment and…
A Spatial Analysis of Contextual Effects on Educational Accountability in Kentucky.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Pitts, Timothy C.; Reeves, Edward B.
A cornerstone of the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990 was the creation of a high-stakes performance assessment program called the Kentucky Instructional Results Information System (KIRIS). KIRIS test results were the basis for granting monetary rewards to schools and school districts where student test performance improved significantly and…
Nebraska Reading First 2007-08 Annual Report
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Hayden, Emily; Trainin, Guy; Javorsky, Kristin; Murphy-Yagil, Malinda; Cook, Kathryn
2008-01-01
The 2007-08 Annual Report presents and analyzes the performance of students in Nebraska Reading First schools during the 2007-08 school year. Teacher log information is also presented, and a district performance comparison is made from the year just previous to Reading First implementation across the four years of implementation. [This report was…
Mission Possible: Measuring Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Wren, Doug; Cashwell, Amy
2018-01-01
The author describes how Virginia Beach City Public Schools developed a performance assessment that they administer to all 4th graders, 7th graders, and high school students in the district. He describes lessons learned about creating good performance tasks and developing a successful scoring process, as well as sharing tools connected to this…
Putting the Pieces in Place: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Schools' Teacher Evaluation System
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Curtis, Rachel
2012-01-01
The first two goals of "Teaching Our Way to the Top, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Public Schools" (CMS) Strategic Plan 2014,--Effective Teaching and Leadership and Performance Management--make clear that the district's top two priorities are ensuring excellent instruction districtwide and creating a performance culture organized on the…
Accounting for the Performance of Students With Disabilities on Statewide Assessments
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Malmgren, Kimber W.; McLaughlin, Margaret J.; Nolet, Victor
2005-01-01
The current study investigates school-level factors that affect the performance of students with disabilities on statewide assessments. Data were collected as part of a larger study examining the effects of education policy reform on students with disabilities. Statewide assessment data for students with disabilities from 2 school districts within…
A Quantitative Analysis of an Arts Program
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Gallagher, Faustina
2013-01-01
This study assessed the relationship of an Arts Summer Learning Program (Arts Program) to student academic performance and college readiness. A North Texas school district collaborated with a research-based Arts Program in 2010, and a new approach was implemented in the summer school program for low-performing students who had failed courses in…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Kemple, James J.
2015-01-01
In the first decade of the 21st century, the New York City (NYC) Department of Education implemented a set of large-scale and much debated high school reforms, which included closing large, low-performing schools, opening new small schools, and extending high school choice to students throughout the district. The school closure process was the…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Kemple, James J.
2015-01-01
In the first decade of the 21st century, the New York City (NYC) Department of Education implemented a set of large-scale and much debated high school reforms, which included closing large, low-performing schools, opening new small schools, and extending high school choice to students throughout the district. The school closure process was the…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Kemple, James J.
2015-01-01
In the first decade of the 21st century, the New York City (NYC) Department of Education implemented a set of large-scale and much debated high school reforms, which included closing large, low-performing schools, opening new small schools, and extending high school choice to students throughout the district. The school closure process was the…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Gower, Matthew Lee
2017-01-01
As four-day school weeks continue to gain popularity among school districts across the United States, determining the potential impact associated with the unconventional school week has become increasingly important (Johnson, 2013). The four-day school week has been credited with producing a number of potential benefits and consequences, but there…
Pay, working conditions, and teacher quality.
Hanushek, Eric A; Rivkin, Steven G
2007-01-01
Eric Hanushek and Steven Rivkin examine how salary and working conditions affect the quality of instruction in the classroom. The wages of teachers relative to those of other college graduates have fallen steadily since 1940. Today, average wages differ little, however, between urban and suburban districts. In some metropolitan areas urban districts pay more, while in others, suburban districts pay more. But working conditions in urban and suburban districts differ substantially, with urban teachers reporting far less administrator and parental support, worse materials, and greater student problems. Difficult working conditions may drive much of the difference in turnover of teachers and the transfer of teachers across schools. Using rich data from Texas public schools, the authors describe in detail what happens when teachers move from school to school. They examine how salaries and student characteristics change when teachers move and also whether turnover affects teacher quality and student achievement. They note that both wages and student characteristics affect teachers' choices and result in a sorting of teachers across schools, but they find little evidence that teacher transitions are detrimental to student learning. The extent to which variations in salaries and working conditions translate into differences in the quality of instruction depends importantly on the effectiveness of school personnel policies in hiring and retaining the most effective teachers and on constraints on both entry into the profession and the firing of low performers. The authors conclude that overall salary increases for teachers would be both expensive and ineffective. The best way to improve the quality of instruction would be to lower barriers to becoming a teacher, such as certification, and to link compensation and career advancement more closely with teachers' ability to raise student performance.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Musau, Lydia Mbaki; Migosi, Joash; Muola, James Matee
2013-01-01
There has been incessant low academic performance in Science, Mathematics and Technology (SMT) subjects especially among girls at form four level in Kitui Central District over the years. The aim of this study was to investigate the determinants of girls' performance in SMT subjects in public secondary schools. Using ex-post-facto survey research…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Chen, Li-Jung; Fox, Kenneth R.; Ku, Po-Wen; Wang, Ching-Hui
2012-01-01
Backround: This study examined the association among childhood obesity, weight status change, and subsequent academic performance at 6-year follow-up. Methods: First-grade students from one elementary school district in Taichung City, Taiwan were followed for 6 years (N = 409). Academic performance was extracted from the school records at the end…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
What Works Clearinghouse, 2015
2015-01-01
For the 2013 study, "Transfer Incentives for High-Performing Teachers: Final Results from a Multisite Randomized Experiment," researchers examined the impact of the Talent Transfer Initiative (TTI) on students' reading and mathematics achievement in 10 school districts. The TTI enabled principals of low-performing schools to provide…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Sanchez Fowler, Laura T.; Banks, Tachelle I.; Anhalt, Karla; Der, Heidi Hinrichs; Kalis, Tara
2008-01-01
The present study examined the relation between teacher ratings of student social functioning and academic performance and teacher-student relationship quality. Data were collected from 230 students and 20 teachers in two high-poverty, low-performing schools in a large urban school district in the Midwest. Students were 93% African American.…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Player, Daniel; Hambrick Hitt, Dallas; Robinson, William
2014-01-01
This guide provides state education agencies (SEAs) and districts (LEAs) with guidance about how to assess the district's readiness to support school turnaround initiatives. Often, school turnaround efforts focus only on the school's structure and leadership. Rarely do policymakers or practitioners think about school turnaround as a system-level…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Slaughter, Helen B.; And Others
Although many large districts have centrally organized their Chapter 1 (Education Consolidation and Improvement Act) compensatory programs at the district and project levels, elementary school improvement efforts are strongly tied to local school autonomy and principal leadership. This paper analyzes the Tucson (Arizona) Unified School District's…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Fehrer, Kendra; Leos-Urbel, Jacob; Messner, Erica; Riley, Nicole
2016-01-01
Since 2014, Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) has partnered with the Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities at Stanford University (Gardner Center) to support OUSD's efforts to assess, enhance, and scale their community schools work. They began by working with the district to develop a System Strategy Map to articulate the district's…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
California State Dept. of Education, Sacramento.
RACIAL IMBALANCE IN THE SAUSALITO SCHOOL DISTRICT HAS LEGAL SOCIAL, ETHICAL, AND EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS. THE SCHOOL POPULATION COMES FROM THREE MAJOR COMMUNITIES WITHIN THE DISTRICT. THE SCHOOLS MUST COPE WITH THE DISCONTINUITY OF A PUPIL ENROLLMENT PATTERN CAUSED BY THE CONSTANT TURNOVER OF PERSONNEL AT THE MILITARY INSTALLATIONS IN THE AREA.…
Opening the Schoolhouse Door: Helping Charter Schools Access Space in District-Owned Facilities
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Gill, Sean; Maas, Tricia
2017-01-01
This paper is part of a series on district-charter cooperation, which has been studied by the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) for more than five years. School choice is growing in cities with the addition of charter schools, and more district leaders are adopting a portfolio approach to schooling: giving district schools autonomy…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Fehrer, Kendra; Leos-Urbel, Jacob
2015-01-01
In 2010, Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) launched an initiative to transform all district schools into full service community schools. The community school design provides integrated supports to students and fosters a school climate conducive to academic, social, and emotional learning. Interventions span in-school and out-of-school time,…
Profiles 1999 State Report. Oklahoma Educational Indicators Program.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Oklahoma State Dept. of Education, Oklahoma City. Office of Accountability.
The Oklahoma Educational Indicators Program is a system developed under the Oklahoma Education Reform Act of 1990 to assess the performance of public schools and school systems. "Profiles 1999" consists of state, district, and school components. Each component divides the information presented into three major reporting categories: (1)…
Procedures Handbook for Elementary School IMC Clerks. Revised.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Allen, Christine
This training manual describes and explains the variety of tasks performed by library clerks in the Riverside (California) Unified School District's elementary school instructional media centers (IMCs). It is noted that the job responsibilities of these clerks fall into four areas with specific duties relating to each: maintenance of the…
Incentives Alone Not Enough to Prod Teacher Effectiveness
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Sawchuk, Stephen
2009-01-01
Policy experts are renewing questions about the role of school culture and leadership in the drive to improve teaching effectiveness in the most-challenging school environments. As states and districts increasingly explore tactics like performance-based pay, incentive programs, and bonuses to attract the best teachers to troubled schools, experts…
The Progress of Education Reform. Volume 11, Number 1
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Education Commission of the States (NJ3), 2010
2010-01-01
States, districts and schools are now being offered unprecedented opportunities to develop programs that will improve student performance and turn around underperforming schools. An understanding of how reducing chronic early absence helps those efforts will go a long way to assure that innovative school improvement policies and practices will be…
Establishing Proficiency Standards for High School Graduation.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Herron, Marshall D.
The Oregon State Board of Education has rejected the use of cut-off scores on a proficiency test to establish minimum performance standards for high school graduation. Instead, each school district is required to specify--by local board adoption--minimum competencies in reading, writing, listening, speaking, analyzing, and computing. These…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Lytle, James H.
2012-01-01
A consensus is emerging about how school leaders affect school performance, and how important principals are to improved student learning. Yet the national reform policies--No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top (RTT)--incorporate assumptions about school and district leadership that are very much at odds with this research. NCLB and RTT call…
Public Schooling in Southeast Wisconsin: 2013-2014 [Summary
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Yeado, Joe; Schmidt, Jeff; Hart, Rebecca; Henken, Rob
2014-01-01
This summary from the "Public Schooling in Southeast Wisconsin: 2013-2014" full report presents the school district performance in a pull-out format. Definitions are provided for the column heading: (1) Total Operations Spending, (2) Property Tax Revenue, (3) Total Enrollment; (4) One-Year Change in Enrollment, (5) Minority Enrollment,…
Achieving More, Spending Less in Schools, Districts, and States
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Walberg, Herbert J.
2011-01-01
In an era of financial stringency and demands for better school performance, it is useful to think about several means of raising school productivity: (1) increase learning effectiveness without increasing costs; (2) reduce costs without diminishing effectiveness; or (3) both, that is, increase effectiveness and simultaneously reduce costs. The…
Counseling, Psychological, and Social Services Staffing: Policies in U.S. School Districts.
Brener, Nancy; Demissie, Zewditu
2018-06-01
Schools are in a unique position to meet the mental and behavioral health needs of children and adolescents because approximately 95% of young people aged 7-17 years attend school. Little is known, however, about policies related to counseling, psychological, and social services staffing in school districts. This study analyzed the prevalence of such policies in public school districts in the U.S. Data from four cycles (2000, 2006, 2012, and 2016) of the School Health Policies and Practices Study, a national survey periodically conducted to assess policies and practices for ten components of school health, were analyzed in 2017. The survey collected data related to counseling, psychological, and social services among nationally representative samples of school districts using online or mailed questionnaires. Sampled districts identified respondents responsible for or most knowledgeable about the content of each questionnaire. The percentage of districts with a district-level counseling, psychological, and social services coordinator increased significantly from 62.6% in 2000 to 79.5% in 2016. In 2016, 56.3% of districts required each school to have someone to coordinate counseling, psychological, and social services at the school. Fewer districts required schools at each level to have a specified ratio of counselors to students (16.2% for elementary schools, 16.8% for middle schools, and 19.8% for high schools), and the percentage of districts with these requirements has decreased significantly since 2012. Increases in the prevalence of district-level staffing policies could help increase the quantity and quality of counseling, psychological, and social services staff in schools nationwide, which in turn could improve mental and behavioral health outcomes for students. This article is part of a supplement entitled The Behavioral Health Workforce: Planning, Practice, and Preparation, which is sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the Health Resources and Services Administration of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Published by Elsevier Inc.
The Need for District Support for School Reform: What the Researchers Say. Research Brief.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Appelbaum, Deborah
This article focuses on the school district's role in implementing Comprehensive School Reform (CSR). Research shows that effective district support for CSR varies from district to district. This is due, in part, to the fact that many prior models bypassed the district, operating under the belief that reform would be more effective if it targeted…
Greves, H Mollie; Rivara, Frederick P
2006-01-01
Background Federal nutritional guidelines apply to school foods provided through the national school lunch and breakfast programs, but few federal regulations apply to other foods and drinks sold in schools (labeled "competitive foods"), which are often high in calories, fat and sugar. Competitive food policies among school districts are increasingly viewed as an important modifiable factor in the school nutrition environment, particularly to address rising rates of childhood overweight. Congress passed legislation in 2004 requiring all school districts to develop a Wellness Policy that includes nutrition guidelines for competitive foods starting in 2006–2007. In addition, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recently published recommendations for schools to address childhood obesity. Methods Representatives of school districts with the largest student enrollment in each state and D.C. (N = 51) were interviewed in October-November 2004 about each school district's nutrition policies on "competitive foods." District policies were examined and compared to the Institute of Medicine's recommendations for schools to address childhood obesity. Information about state competitive food policies was accessed via the Internet, and through state and district contacts. Results The 51 districts accounted for 5.9 million students, representing 11% of US students. Nineteen of the 51 districts (39%) had competitive food policies beyond state or federal requirements. The majority of these district policies (79%) were adopted since 2002. School district policies varied in scope and requirements. Ten districts (53%) set different standards by grade level. Most district policies had criteria for food and beverage content (74%) and prohibited the sale of soda in all schools (63%); fewer policies restricted portion size of foods (53%) or beverages (47%). Restrictions more often applied to vending machines (95%), cafeteria à la carte (79%), and student stores (79%) than fundraising activities (47%). Most of the policies did not address more comprehensive approaches to the school nutrition environment, such as nutrition education (32%) or advertising to students (26%), nor did they include guidelines on physical education (11%). In addition, few policies addressed monitoring (32%) or consequences for non-compliance (11%). No policy restricted foods sold for after-school fundraising or required monitoring physical health indicators (e.g. BMI). Conclusion When compared to the Institute of Medicine's recommendations for schools' role in preventing obesity, none of the nutrition policies among each state's largest school district had addressed all the recommendations by 2004–2005. Nutritionists, nurses, pediatricians, parents, and others concerned about child health have an unprecedented opportunity to help shape and implement more comprehensive school district nutrition policies as part of the Congressional requirement for a "Wellness Policy" by 2006–2007. PMID:16390544
How Charter Schools Do, and Don't, Inspire Change in Traditional Public School Districts
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Linick, Matthew; Lubienski, Christopher
2013-01-01
For some, charter schools represent the hope of improved student learning and performance. It is hoped to understand the theory of change underlying charter schools relative to the actual evidence on their impact. In order to address this issue, the authors examine the logic of organizational change and competitive options, drawing on evidence…
Elementary Counselor Need and Duties: Do Nevada's Principals Reflect the National Opinion?
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Pierce, Keith A.
In a leading Nevada school district 35 elementary principals were surveyed to determine their perception of the need for elementary school counselors and the duties they would like a counselor to perform in their schools should counselors become available. Two findings emerged prominently: (1) the principals do want elementary school counselors;…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Jacobsen, Rebecca; Snyder, Jeffrey W.; Saultz, Andrew
2014-01-01
The 2001 No Child Left Behind Act requires local education agencies to publicly disseminate school performance data. In response, districts and state departments of education have created "school report cards" that vary widely. While data dissemination policies can improve institutional legitimacy and ensure ongoing support, we suggest…
The Effects of School Turnaround in Tennessee's Achievement School District and Innovation Zones
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Zimmer, Ron; Henry, Gary T.; Kho, Adam
2017-01-01
In recent years, the federal government has invested billions of dollars to reform chronically low-performing schools. To fulfill their federal Race to the Top grant agreement, Tennessee implemented three turnaround strategies that adhered to the federal restart and transformation models: (a) placed schools under the auspices of the Achievement…
Alaska's Public Schools: 2014-2015 Report Card to the Public
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Alaska Department of Education & Early Development, 2015
2015-01-01
This statewide Report Card to the Public is published in accordance with Alaska Statute 14.03.120 for the school year 2014-2015. Under state law, each school district also is required to report information about its performance. Public knowledge pertaining to the school system is an important part of Alaska's accountability system. This report is…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Christie, Kathy; Millard, Maria; Thomsen, Jennifer; Wixom, Micah
2014-01-01
Forty-two states and the District of Columbia have enacted charter school legislation. The Education Commission of the States (ECS) analysts reviewed laws in the 50 states in creating an online database that highlights how state charter school laws vary, particularly in how states establish standards and accountability for charter school…
Building a Grad Nation. Executive Brief: Overview of 2012-13 High School Graduation Rates
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Civic Enterprises, 2015
2015-01-01
Over the past dozen years, schools, districts, and states have begun to focus increased attention on boosting high school graduation rates. During this period, the nation has seen more evidence-based educational reforms in low-performing schools, more support for struggling students, and better data and stronger accountability to chart progress…
High School Teachers' Perceptions of ePortfolios and Classroom Practice: A Single-Case Study
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Pimentel, Jerelyn M.
2010-01-01
Rhode Island's proficiency-based high school diploma system requires high school graduates to demonstrate proficiency in standard-based content and applied learning skills through at least two performance assessment measures (RIDE, 2003). To meet these requirements, 12 of Rhode Island's 39 school districts are using ePortfolios as one of their…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Moore, Forrest W.
2009-01-01
The primary objective of this qualitative study is to explore the impact of autonomy on the relationship between schools and districts of the school level across governance, operations, curriculum and instruction and the decision making that accompanies the each of these factors. More specifically, this study focuses the impact of autonomy within…
Faculty Trust in the Principal: An Essential Ingredient in High-Performing Schools
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Tschannen-Moran, Megan; Gareis, Christopher R.
2015-01-01
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships among faculty trust in the principal, principal leadership behaviors, school climate, and student achievement. Design/methodology/approach: Data from 64 elementary, middle, and high schools in two school districts formed the basis of the study (n = 3,215 teachers), allowing for…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Cullen, Joseph Patrick
2010-01-01
Consolidated Regional High Schools (RHSs) have replaced traditional Community High Schools (CHSs) in many nonmetropolitan communities. Consolidation purports to offer cost savings that, in theory, enable nonmetropolitan districts to provide a wider array of instructional opportunities to their students. Nonetheless, critics argue that the benefits…
NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)
Miller, Christopher L.
In the United States of America, the public education system is comprised of over 14,000 school districts. Each of these unique districts is being affected by the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. In turn, this diverse population of school districts is determining the impact on education of this sweeping federal education policy. This study examines eight of those school districts to determine their actions related to the early phase of the implementation of one portion of NCLB, the accountability provisions prescribing standardized assessment for the determination of Adequate Yearly Progress. Specifically, this study examines what these eight Wisconsin school districts, serving from 1,000 to over 5,000 students, did with the student achievement data resulting from their state assessment, the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examinations (WKCE). A wide variety of responses were found in how school districts used the WKCE data. The eight school districts were examined to determine what features of their organizations were responsible for how they responded to the enactment of the AYP provisions, specifically how they used the WCKE data. District responses were found to be determined by district size, governance structures, personnel, and dispositions. The interactions of these characteristics were considered in light of organizational studies using conceptualizations borrowed from ecology and the theory of evolution and by studies of school districts.
Comprehensive Profile of the San Antonio Indepentent School District 1983-1984.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
San Antonio Independent School District, TX.
This report presents statistical data about the San Antonio (Texas) Independent School District for the 1983-1984 school year. Trends for five or ten year groupings of past years are also presented. The report consolidates both district and individual school information from regular reports by the different district departments. The data is…
Governing Urban School Districts: Efforts in Los Angeles to Effect Change
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Augustine, Catherine H.; Epstein, Diana; Vuollo, Mirka
2006-01-01
Many urban school district students are dropping out and few of the remaining ones reach state or district achievement goals. These problems make governing urban schools both difficult and important. In 2005-06, the governance structure of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) was examined, debated, criticized, and praised by several…
Research Use by Leaders in Canadian School Districts
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Cooper, Amander; Levin, Ben
2013-01-01
This paper, part of a larger study, investigates the ways research is used by leaders in Canadian schools and districts, an area in which there is relatively little empirical evidence. The paper analyzes survey results from 188 education leaders in 11 school districts across Canada about school and district practices related to the use of…
Projecting Enrollment in Rural Schools: A Study of Three Vermont School Districts
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Grip, Richard S.
2004-01-01
Large numbers of rural districts have experienced sharp declines in enrollment, unlike their suburban counterparts. Accurate enrollment projections are required, whether a district needs to build new schools or consolidate existing ones. For school districts having more than 600 students, a quantitative method such as the Cohort-Survival Ratio…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Andry, Beverly Guillory
2011-01-01
The city of New Orleans has embarked on an historic experiment reinventing its schools--once considered among the worst in the country--from a centralized, single district model of education to a two district model in which both the Recovery School District (RSD) and the preexisting Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) both operate direct run and…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Igoe, Joseph A.; DiRocco, Anthony P.
This booklet is designed to give practical and realistic advice to school district officials faced with the possibility of a teachers' strike. It is intended for use both by school district administrators and school board members. The booklet is organized into four sections that focus in turn on signs of a pending teachers' strike, union…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Baker, Bruce D.
2012-01-01
The goal of this study is to simultaneously explore resource allocation across schools within large urban school districts and across all schools within major metropolitan areas that include those urban districts in the state of Texas. This study uses a three-year panel, from 2005 to 2007, for Texas elementary schools in the Houston, Dallas,…
Review of the Organizational Structure and Operations of the Los Angeles Unified School District
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Council of the Great City Schools, 2006
2006-01-01
The Los Angeles Unified School District is the second largest public school system in the United States, and one of the largest organizations of any kind in the country. As with urban school systems across the country, the Los Angeles school district is under enormous pressure to improve. The district is under public scrutiny and is the subject of…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Johnson, Clarence; Kritsonis, William Allan
2007-01-01
This article addresses several key ongoing issues in a large urban school district. Literature focuses on what make a large urban school district effective in Human Resource Management. The effectiveness is addressed through recruitment and retention practices. A comparison of the school district with current research is the main approach to the…
Temple, Judy A; Reynolds, Arthur J
Budget constraints and difficulty raising taxes limit school districts from expanding education programming even when research shows that additional expenditures would generate economic benefits that are greater than costs. Recently, coalitions of private investors, philanthropists, education practitioners, and government finance analysts have emerged to create opportunities to expand education services that promise high rates of social net benefits without raising taxes or reducing other expenditures. These collaborators have a strong interest in obtaining careful estimates of educational program effectiveness. We describe the use of social-impact borrowing to increase access to the Child-Parent Center preschool-through-third-grade intervention for at-risk students in the Chicago Public School District. The partners include the city, school district, investors, nonprofit organizations, and a university. The key to the feasibility of social-impact borrowing is the ability to document that early intervention can reduce the need for later special-education services. With the help of private investors and nonprofit organizations, it is possible for public school districts to finance services with funds from private sources and use future cost savings to repay this debt. We discuss how social-impact borrowing is being used in Chicago and in Salt Lake County as the nation's first two instances of using pay-for-performance social-impact borrowing to support early education.
School District Personnel Describe One Example of Effective Change Implementation.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Jones, Toni Griego
Three large urban school districts located in the Midwest, Southwest, and West Coast regions were involved in a study designed to reveal district personnel's perceptions of change within their school district. After describing the study, this document analyzes perceptions of change related to one district's new bilingual program that was…
Analysis of Superintendent Longevity in Large School Districts: A Qualitative Study
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Mouton, Nikki Golar
2013-01-01
School district leadership matters, as evidenced by a meta-analysis of 27 reports and 1,210 districts conducted by Waters and Marzano (2006) which highlights a statistically significant correlation between district leadership and student achievement. Because this relationship is significant, it is important for school districts to have effective…
School District Employment Reductions Slow. Get the Facts. #1
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Tallman, Mark
2012-01-01
Kansas school districts reduced employment by 327 full-time equivalent positions this school year, the smallest reduction in three years of cuts to district operating budgets. Districts reduced positions by 561 in FY 2010 and 1,626 in FY 2011. Districts eliminated nearly 400 "regular" teaching positions this year, but added 114 special…
Preschool Guidelines: Rural Model (Trimble Local School District).
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Ohio State Dept. of Education, Columbus. Div. of Educational Services.
The purpose of this handbook is to guide rural school districts intending to establish a preschool program. The program described was established in the Trimble Local School District in the rural Appalachian area of northern Athens County, the third poorest district in Ohio. Contents concern: (1) the district's beliefs about children; (2)…
Income Segregation between Schools and School Districts
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Owens, Ann; Reardon, Sean F.; Jencks, Christopher
2016-01-01
Although trends in the racial segregation of schools are well documented, less is known about trends in income segregation. We use multiple data sources to document trends in income segregation between schools and school districts. Between-district income segregation of families with children enrolled in public school increased by over 15% from…
Women of Color School Leaders: Leadership Schools Should Not Ignore
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Haar, Jean M.; Robicheau, Jerry W.
2009-01-01
School districts are faced with challenges resulting from the changing demographics of the student population. Consequently, school districts are creating positive, multicultural learning environments. School districts intent on establishing multicultural learning environments should consider the contributions people of color, specifically women…
School District Response to the Ohio Local Option Income Tax.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
House, Jess E.
Ohio State Senate Bill 28 allows school districts, with voter approval, to impose a tax on the incomes of district residents. This paper examines the early response of school districts to the opportunity presented by the legislation. The paper explains the Ohio system for funding public schools, with a focus on revenue growth, describes features…
Elementary and Secondary Civil Rights Survey, 1984. National Summaries.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
DBS Corp., Arlington, VA.
This 1984 survey was conducted to obtain data on the characteristics of public school students in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The 3,510 school districts selected to participate were statistically sampled from approximately 16,000 U.S. school districts, and the schools within the selected districts were subsampled: (1) all special…
A Model for Determining School District Cash Flow Needs.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Dembowski, Frederick L.
This paper discusses a model to optimize cash management in school districts. A brief discussion of the cash flow pattern of school districts is followed by an analysis of the constraints faced by the school districts in their investment planning process. A linear programming model used to optimize net interest earnings on investments is developed…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Sherman, Joel D.; Gregory, Barbra; Poirier, Jeffrey M.
This report is an annual collection of school district financial data. Specifically, this report presents analyses of school district revenues from the 1997-98 school year. The report is designed to address the following questions about the financing of public elementary and secondary education at the state and district levels: How much money per…
Little Reason for Being: A Case of School District Dissolution.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Ellis, Pam
In 1980, Tonnelly Central School District became the first school district in New York State to be dissolved pursuant to Section 1505 of Education Law, marking the first use of dissolution and annexation as a means by which to address the programmatic and management problems encountered in the operation of a central school district. Problems faced…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Little, Paula S.; Miller, Stephen K.
A study examined the extent to which demographic factors predict rural values in Kentucky public school district hiring officials. Among the demographic factors considered were school district metropolitan classification, school district size, community racial composition, decision makers' position in the organizational hierarchy, and decision…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Silvernail, David L.; Linet, Sarah R.
2014-01-01
The goal of this study was to: (1) identify challenges faced by Maine school districts in providing high quality public education; (2) describe the magnitude of the challenges; and (3) identify areas where school districts were experiencing some success in meeting these challenges. The School Districts Challenge Survey was distributed online to…
The Determinants of School District Salary Incentives: An Empirical Analysis of, Where and Why
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Martin, Stephanie M.
2010-01-01
Most public school districts in the United States use a salary schedule to determine compensation for teachers within the district. However, some school districts have implemented incentive pay schemes that allow flexibility at the school or even individual teacher level. These compensation schemes in some ways may more closely approximate a…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
General Accounting Office, Washington, DC. Div. of Human Resources.
An examination was made of the U.S. Department of Education grants awarded to the Cleveland School District for desegregation activities, including how Department of Education funds were used by the school district and how the department administered and monitored Magnet School grants awarded to the school district for fiscal years 1986 and 1987.…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Scherer, Ethan; Ryan, Sarah; Daugherty, Lindsay; Schweig, Jonathan David; Bozick, Robert; Gonzalez, Gabriella C.
2014-01-01
In 2009, the City of New Haven and New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) announced a sweeping K-12 educational reform, New Haven School Change. The district had three primary goals for School Change: (1) close the gap between the performance of NHPS students' and Connecticut students' averages on state tests, (2) cut the high school dropout rate in…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Gonzalez, Gabriella C.; Bozick, Robert; Daugherty, Lindsay; Scherer, Ethan; Singh, Reema; Suárez, Mónica Jacobo; Ryan, Sarah
2014-01-01
In 2009, the City of New Haven and New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) announced a sweeping K-12 educational reform, New Haven School Change. The district had three primary goals for School Change: (1) close the gap between the performance of NHPS students' and Connecticut students' averages on state tests, (2) cut the high school dropout rate in…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Cucchiara, Maia Bloomfield; Rooney, Erin; Robertson-Kraft, Claire
2015-01-01
School turnaround--a reform strategy that strives for quick and dramatic transformation of low-performing schools--has gained prominence in recent years. This study uses interviews and focus groups conducted with 86 teachers in 13 schools during the early stages of school turnaround in a large urban district to examine teachers' perceptions of the…
Boston Public Schools: Family Guide to the Pilot, Horace Mann, and Innovation Schools, 2011-2012
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Center for Collaborative Education, 2012
2012-01-01
A Pilot School is a public school in the Boston Public School district with teachers who are members of the Boston Teachers Union. A Horace Mann Charter School is a public school under a Massachusetts state charter that operates within a regular school district and serves the students and families enrolled in that district. An Innovation School, a…
Putting College and Career Readiness at the Forefront of District Priorities in Dallas
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Hall, Shane
2013-01-01
Dallas Independent School District's (ISD) efforts to develop a system of college readiness indicators began in 2008, when they received a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant under the foundation's College-Ready Education initiative. With this grant, Dallas ISD's Performance Management and Analytics department developed a college readiness…
Exploring District-Level Expenditure-to-Performance Ratios. REL 2017-267
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Lavigne, Heather J.; Ryan, Sarah; Zweig, Jacqueline S.; Buffington, Pamela J.
2017-01-01
State education budgets have shrunk since the economic recession of 2007-09. During the 2012-13 school year 35 states provided less funding for education than they had five years earlier (Leachman, Albares, Masterson, & Wallace, 2016; Levin et al., 2012; Oliff, Mai, & Leachman, 2012). As a result, districts across the country are seeking…
Department of Education Revives Civil Rights Office
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Finkel, Ed
2010-01-01
This article reports on the mission of the Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education to ensure equal access to education through compliance reviews. The Office hopes to use these reviews to provide technical assistance to help districts improve their performance. In late March, the Los Angeles Unified School District became the…
Determining Dropout Rates in Large City School Districts: Problems and Accomplishments.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Frymier, Jack
As part of an effort to reduce high school dropout rates in large city school districts, Phi Delta Kappa, the National Association of Secondary School Principals, the Council of Great City Schools, and a group of large city school districts undertook an effort to determine baseline statistics in high schools in large cities by using standardized…
Sexual Harassment Policies in Florida School Districts.
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Rienzo, Barbara A.; Moore, Michele Johnson
1998-01-01
Investigated the extent to which Florida's school districts complied with the Florida Department of Education's (FDOE) recommendations for addressing sexual harassment in schools. Surveys of district equity coordinators and analysis of policies indicated that most districts approved sexual harassment policies incorporating many FDOE…
Characteristics of Illinois School Districts That Employ School Nurses.
Searing, Lisabeth M; Guenette, Molly
2016-08-01
Research indicates that school nursing services are cost-effective, but the National Association of School Nurses estimates that 25% of schools do not have a school nurse (SN). The purpose of this study was to identify the characteristics of Illinois school districts that employed SNs. This was a secondary data analysis of Illinois School Report Card system data as well as data obtained from district websites regarding SNs. Employment of an SN was determined for 95% of the 862 existing districts. Binary logistic regression analysis found that district size was the largest significant predictor of employment of an SN. Other factors included the type of district and diversity of the teaching staff as well as the percentage of students receiving special education services or with limited English proficiency. These findings indicate where to focus advocacy and policy efforts to encourage employment of SNs. © The Author(s) 2015.
Developing a Management System (AMOAS).
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Morrell, James E.; Price, Bonnie B.
To evaluate their school management personnel, the Muhlenberg (Pennsylvania) School District adopted the Administrative Management by Objectives Appraisal System (AMOAS). Administrators are evaluated on the basis of objectives that they establish in conjunction with their immediate supervisor and on everyday job performance. Above satisfactory…
The Future of Instructional Teacher Leader Roles
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Mangin, Melinda M.; Stoelinga, Sara Ray
2010-01-01
In response to increased performance expectations, schools and districts are turning to nonsupervisory, school-based, instructional teacher leader roles to help improve teachers' instruction and enhance student learning. Increased opportunities to learn about teacher leadership may facilitate the implementation and institutionalization of…
The Influence of Teach for America on Algebra I Student Achievement
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Carroll, Curtis Andrew
2013-01-01
This non-experimental study examined the influence of an initiative that High Risk School District (pseudonym) implemented to offset the effect of low student academic performance in low performing-schools. The study attempted to answer the following research question: Does having a Teach For America (TFA) teacher have an influence on a student's…
A Historical View of the Impact of a Secondary Literacy Framework
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Cazier, James S.
2011-01-01
Little is known about the impact of staff development programs on student reading comprehension performance. This study examined the impact of staff supported through "Reading Next"'s Project C.R.I.S.S. on middle and high school student remedial reading performance in one Southwestern U.S. school district from 2005 to 2010. This…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Hoff, Larry A.
2009-01-01
This study was a cross-sectional study of leadership and staff of a public school system in Georgia concerning their temperament type, emergency management motivation and emergency management knowledge in relation to Emergency Management/Crisis performance (ERCM). The study consisted of an inclusive questionnaire that contains questions on four…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Justine, Nairuba
2011-01-01
The purpose of the study was to establish the effect of provision of fringe benefits and the nature of working conditions under motivational practices on teachers' performance in secondary schools. The study was qualitative and quantitative; and descriptive-correlation research design was used in the study. The researcher used purposive and simple…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Marsh, Julie A.; Bush-Mecenas, Susan; Hough, Heather
2017-01-01
Purpose: The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) represents a notable shift in K-12 accountability, requiring a more comprehensive approach to assessing school performance and a less prescriptive approach to intervening in low-performing schools. In this article, we seek to leverage the experiences of California's CORE (California Office to Reform…
Early Returns on District of Columbia Charter Schools. Capital Campaign
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Mead, Sara
2005-01-01
In this report for the Progressive Policy Institute's 21st Century Schools Project, the author examines charter schooling in Washington, D.C., including the region's unique history of charter schooling and the challenges these schools face. She is optimistic about the future of the District's charter school movement, but argues that District and…
Income Segregation between Schools and School Districts. CEPA Working Paper No. 16-04
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Owens, Ann; Reardon, Sean F.; Jencks, Christopher
2016-01-01
Although trends in the racial segregation of schools are well documented, less is known about trends in "income" segregation. We use multiple data sources to document trends in income segregation between schools and school districts. Between-district income segregation of families with children enrolled in public school increased by over…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Williams, Ann C.; Kersten, Thomas A.
2013-01-01
The purpose of this study was to identify financial management strategies that school business officials have found most successful in achieving school district financial stability. To accomplish, 208 Illinois school business officials in six counties: Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry, and Will counties, excluding Chicago School District 299,…
Human Resource Support for School Principals in Two, Urban School Districts: An Exploratory Study
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Lochmiller, Chad R.
2010-01-01
School districts are increasingly focused on instructional practice in classrooms. Many urban school districts have shifted decision-making responsibility to school principals in order to improve instruction. This reform strategy has been referred to as decentralization or school-based management. Decentralization has a significant influence on…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
General Accounting Office, Washington, DC. Health, Education, and Human Services Div.
The District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) is one of the largest public school districts in the United States. Since 1989-90, there have been questions about several aspects of DCPS's enrollment-count process. A valid enrollment-count process and an accurate count are critical to DCPS's district- and school-level planning, staffing, funding,…
Teachers' Perceptions of Factors That Influence Teacher Turnover
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
McCray, Harold, Jr.
2017-01-01
Teacher turnover is a critical issue for the public education community because it influences student performance, school climate, and employee morale. In a large urban school district in the northeastern United States, the turnover rate has been high; teacher morale is low, and teacher participation in the school community is lacking. The purpose…
Help Wanted: Flexibility for Innovative State Education Agencies
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Murphy, Patrick
2014-01-01
State education agencies, or SEAs, are being asked-and in some cases, forced-to make operational changes in the name of school improvement. New laws and expectations are pushing them to play a greater role in managing school performance, displacing to a significant degree their decades-old responsibility for monitoring local school districts for…
Responding to the Needs of Foster Teens in a Rural School District
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
DeGarmo, John Nelson
2012-01-01
As more children are placed under foster care, schools often have difficulty in responding to newly placed foster teens. Foster teens often exhibit both academic and behavioral adjustment issues, leading to disciplinary problems and high failure, and dropout rates. Attachment theory related to placement disruptions, school performance and…
Making the Case for Sustainable K-12 School Environmental Health Programs
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Belle, Kara; Utebay, Kudret; McArthur, Ashley
2012-01-01
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) offers resources to help a school or school district improve the environmental health and energy performance of its facilities, and in many cases, apply the savings generated through improved energy efficiency toward facility improvements, for the betterment of students, faculty, and staff. As an…
Principals' Group Seeks Influence on Incentive Pay
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Samuels, Christina A.
2008-01-01
School districts that want to start pay-for-performance programs for school leaders should look beyond high-stakes student tests as the primary measure for awarding bonuses, a position paper released last week by the National Association of Secondary School Principals says. Gerald N. Tirozzi, the executive director of the Reston, Virginia-based…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
California Univ., Los Angeles. Center for Mental Health in Schools.
Most school districts employ student support or "pupil services professionals," such as school psychologists, counselors, and social workers. These personnel perform services connected with mental health and psychosocial problems. The format usually is a combination of centrally based and school-based services. Amelioration of the full continuum…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Ngoma, Sylvester
2010-01-01
There is growing recognition that an electronic Student Information System (SIS) affects student learning. Given the strategic importance of SIS in supporting school administration and enhancing student performance, school districts are increasingly interested in acquiring the most effective and efficient Student Information Systems for their…
Art Supports Reading Comprehension
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Wurst, Douglas; Jones, Dana; Moore, Jim
2005-01-01
State-mandated, high-stakes testing is the primary means by which schools are judged. Whether this is a fair and accurate way of judging the performance of schools may remain in debate for a long time. Some school districts have gone so far as reducing or eliminating "special" classes--in particular art and music. Art teachers can help prepare…
Public Schooling in Southeast Wisconsin: 2013-2014
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Yeado, Joe; Schmidt, Jeff; Hart, Rebecca; Henken, Rob
2014-01-01
Over nearly three decades, the Public Policy Forum has collected and analyzed education data to report on the demographics, academic performance, and finances of public schools and districts in southeast Wisconsin. This 29th annual public schools report continues that tradition with updated analyses of new data and trends to shed light on the…
An Investigation of the Teacher Advancement Program and Student Performance in Urban Schools
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Grant, Ginger Madonna
2010-01-01
In 2005, the achievement gap between African-American and Caucasian students doubled in the state of Louisiana. Sixty-three percent of the public schools in an urban school district in southeastern Louisiana received an Academically Unacceptable Status (AUS) rating according to Louisiana accountability standards. In 2006, the Louisiana Board of…
Sanchez-Vaznaugh, Emma V.; Goldman Rosas, Lisa; Fernández-Peña, José Ramón; Baek, Jonggyu; Egerter, Susan; Sánchez, Brisa N.
2017-01-01
Objectives To investigate the contribution of school neighborhood socioeconomic advantage to the association between school-district physical education policy compliance in California public schools and Latino students’ physical fitness. Methods Cross-sectional Fitnessgram data for public-school students were linked with school- and district-level information, district-level physical education policy compliance from 2004–2005 and 2005–2006, and 2000 United States Census data. Multilevel logistic regression models examined whether income and education levels in school neighborhoods moderated the effects of district-level physical education policy compliance on Latino fifth-graders’ fitness levels. Results Physical education compliance data were available for 48 California school districts, which included 64,073 Latino fifth-graders. Fewer than half (23, or 46%) of these districts were found to be in compliance, and only 16% of Latino fifth-graders attended schools in compliant districts. Overall, there was a positive association between district compliance with physical education policy and fitness (OR, 95%CI: 1.38, 1.07, 1.78) adjusted for covariates. There was no significant interaction between school neighborhood socioeconomic advantage and physical education policy compliance (p>.05): there was a positive pattern in the association between school district compliance with physical education policy and student fitness levels across levels of socioeconomic advantage, though the association was not always significant. Conclusions Across neighborhoods with varying levels of socioeconomic advantage, increasing physical education policy compliance in elementary schools may be an effective strategy for improving fitness among Latino children. PMID:28591139
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Crane, Eric W.; Barrat, Vanessa X.; Huang, Min
2011-01-01
This technical brief responds to an Arizona Department of Education request to study academic performance in schools receiving funding through the federal Title I compensatory education program, the section of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 governing resources for schools and districts serving disadvantaged populations. The brief describes…
Year-Round Education: Change and Choice for Schools and Teachers
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Haser, Shelly Gismondi; Nasser, Ilham
2005-01-01
Over the last 20 years, many districts and schools have begun to explore year-round education or a modified calendar in response to student under-achievement in low performing schools. Here, the authors detail their two-year study of Title I, year-round, or modified calendar schools that switched from a traditional to a modified schedule in order…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Lin, Yi-Hsien
2013-01-01
This study was designed to explore the differences between high school teachers with art and science backgrounds in terms of curriculum and student performance in art and design education, federal educational policy, and financial support. The study took place in a local independent school district in Texarkana, Texas. The independent school…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Fowler, Crystal Nicole
2013-01-01
This qualitative descriptive case study explored the perceptions of parents and teachers of the academic achievement gap in mathematics between African-American middle school males and their White counterparts. Ten parents, both African-American and White, with students attending middle school in the Cherokee County School District and 5 teachers…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Brown, Marcie
2011-01-01
Purpose: The purpose of this case study was to determine key strategies in the areas of instructional leadership, communication, and empowerment used by the principals of selected high-poverty elementary schools in two high-poverty San Bernardino County school districts that exceeded their Academic Performance Index growth target score by forty or…
ERIC Educational Resources Information Center
Center on Educational Governance, 2008
2008-01-01
This report, which is the second annual report on charter schools in California by the University of Southern California's (USC's) Center on Educational Governance, offers a unique view of charter school performance. Using both financial and academic data submitted by school districts to the state of California, this report looks well beyond test…
The Geography of Inequality: Why Separate Means Unequal in American Public Schools*
Logan, John R.; Minca, Elisabeta; Adar, Sinem
2013-01-01
Persistent school segregation does not only mean that children of different racial and ethnic backgrounds attend different schools, but their schools are also unequal in their performance. This study documents nationally the extent of disparities in school performance between schools attended by whites and Asians compared to blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans. It further examines the geography of school inequality in two ways. First it analyzes the segregation of students between different types of school profiles based on racial composition, poverty and metropolitan location. Second it estimates the independent effects of these and other school and school district characteristics on school performance, identifying which aspects of school segregation are the most important sources of disadvantage. A focus on schools at the bottom of the distribution as in No Schools Left Behind would not ameliorate wide disparities between groups that are found run across the whole spectrum of school performance. PMID:24259754