<p> Digital textbooks continue to hold the potential to revolutionize the dissemination of knowledge to anyone, anywhere. The understanding needed to reach a new digital paradigm includes tools that are consistent with the needs of a new generation of educators and students. This qualitative modified Delphi study provides a foundation that defines the function, structure, and role of the textbook in education. The textbook is defined as a basic educational resource that provides definitive knowledge, defines and bounds the scope of discussion and learning, and helps assure that the stated learning goals are met. A textbook is an educational resource and may contain other resources. As such, the textbook functions as an educational workspace; digital textbooks need to function as the principal resource in an online or interactive educational workspace that supports a mix of materials, including and regardless of multiple media formats. As is the role of the best technology, a fully functional digital textbook seamlessly encapsulates the educational materials and resources needed by the specific course. The consideration of linear and nonlinear study functions in terms of existing devices and interfaces played a critical role in understanding textbooks. Current PDF-based digital textbooks do not meet students&rsquo; needs. A list of functional considerations, that need to be part of the next generation of digital textbooks, is included in this study. Students need to be able to tailor the interface to best suit their individual preferences. The importance of reducing costs in the marketplace will ultimately decide which technologies will succeed.</p>

<p> Problem and Purpose</p><p> The American K-12 school principal is responsible for providing a learning environment that is physically and emotionally safe. An abrasive teacher who displays bullying behaviors towards students is a threat to that environment, impeding student academic progress and decreasing student perceptions of safety. Principals intervene, with risk to themselves. </p><p> This study sought to understand principal intervention by: (a) estimating the prevalence of abrasive teachers, (b) asking how principals identify abrasive teachers, (c) classifying situational elements that enhance or inhibit the principal's motivation to intervene, (d) exploring the interventions principals used, (e) examining the effects those interventions had on the schools, and (f) searching for patterns in interventions that might be helpful to theorists and practitioners. </p><p> Method</p><p> A fully integrated, mixed-methods design was used in collecting and interpreting data from 515 surveys and 21 semi-structured, in-depth interviews. The volunteer sample was composed of K-12 principals from California public and private schools. Findings were based on the perceptions of the principals. Principal perception was used due to the principal's legal and moral responsibility for the school, its students, and its teachers, and due to his/her access to all school stakeholders. </p><p> Results </p><p> The study found that four out of five (80.1%) of the schools represented in the study currently have&mdash;or in the past 3 years have had&mdash;an average of 2.9 abrasive teachers. The teachers were disproportionately distributed across grade levels, subject areas, sex of the teachers, years of teaching experience, and race. </p><p> The study identified five types of teacher maltreatment of students: verbal, professional, physical, non-verbal, and social. The study found that student symptoms could be grouped under the headings of emotional states, psychosomatic manifestations, fight responses, flight responses, and asking for help. The study also categorized the various theories principals hold to explain why a teacher would use abrasive behaviors. </p><p> Nearly half of the reported interventions resulted in improved teacher performance as perceived by the principal. Nearly a quarter resulted in the teacher leaving the classroom, and a little more than a quarter resulted in no change or in the worsening of the situation. Local teacher unions sometimes worked cooperatively with the principal who was striving for the professional improvement or removal of a teacher. More often, unions impeded the principal's role of safeguarding the learning environment for each student. Due to the exploratory nature of this study, additional textual analyses were conducted, and 14 additional hypotheses and 18 sub-hypotheses were tested. </p><p> Conclusions and Recommendations</p><p> From the findings it was concluded: (a) abrasive teachers were present in a large majority of schools, (b) anxious principals were less likely to use interventions that required action with tangible outcomes, (c) schools need a systemic approach to dealing with aggression on all levels within the school community, and (d) principals and unions should develop ways to maintain teacher protections without sabotaging student learning. </p><p> Implications for practice include six recommendations for school stakeholders, three themes that should be included in professional development for principals, and 12 pieces of advice that veteran principals wished to give to rookie principals. The study ends with six specific recommendations for further research.</p>

<p> Six charter schools in California have aligned their fiscal management and special education services to create a power base that protects their diverse approaches to schooling. This qualitative case study offers an insider's perspective on how these schools came to working together and how neighboring districts have been affected. Using the lens of special education services and analyzing data gathered through interviews and documentation, this study demonstrates the effectiveness of a model that can transform the school district landscape.</p>

<p>Federal, state, and local school policies since the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 have increased the focus on student achievement. Subjects such as physical education have become less of a priority. At the same time, childhood obesity is a serious public health problem. Virginia schools provide an opportunity for student to learn about the importance of being physical activity and knowledge to lead an active life through physical education class. The purpose of the study was to explore elementary physical education teachers' in the Bergling School Division (a pseudonym) in the Commonwealth of Virginia implementation of the physical education curriculum, and their knowledge of the state and local school division physical education policies. In addition, the study examined their perceptions of factors to implementing the curriculum. A survey was administered to a population of elementary physical education teachers in the Bergling School Division. Part one of the survey included factors to curriculum implementation. Part two of the survey included items related to the teachers' application of the curriculum and understanding of policies. The results were analyzed using quantitative methods to determine if relationships exist between factors to curriculum implementation and specified teacher demographics, setting, and perception of policy. Findings from the survey data show teachers are using the physical education curriculum to teach, but lack competence in the policies that guide how the subject is implemented. Furthermore, teachers sight lack of time with students, class size, and low priority for physical education as factors to curriculum implementation.

<p> School district calendars built around a four-day week have been in existence for decades. Early research cited savings in energy and transportation costs prompting the increase in schools adopting the four-day week. In recent years, studies have focused on the instructional benefits of making the switch from a five-day to four-day school week. Effective use of time as an instructional resource plays a meaningful role in educational leadership activities of school district superintendents. </p><p> This multisite case study sought to describe the perceptions of 10 South Dakota superintendents employed in school districts using a four-day calendar regarding the quality of their professional development programs. Data were collected using a semi-structured interview based on the McREL Professional Development Audit. Additional data gathered by the researcher included school district demographics, professional development planning documents, school calendars, and district websites. </p><p> Superintendents believed the four-day school week calendar provided the time to make a positive impact on the vision and goals, planning, design, resources, and evaluation components of a high quality professional development program. The study supported current research that district planners should provide professional development time that is organized, structured, and purposefully driven. Common themes among respondents included (a) articulate and set as a strategic goal during the calendar adoption process the importance of implementing a high quality professional development program for teachers and set specific dates within the calendar assigned for professional development (b) incorporate student remedial activities into the calendar (c) provide fiscal resources to support the professional development program, and (d) demonstrate effective administrative leadership to ensure fidelity in the design and implementation of the district's professional development program.</p>

<p> This dissertation study documents in-depth the exploration of the Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) between the Dayton Regional STEM School (DRSS) and their industry partners as well as the establishment of a framework for evaluating and assessing PPPs. The public-private partnership agreements were studied in order to answer the over-arching research question: How is an effective public-private partnership established, assessed, and evaluated in education? A descriptive case study methodology was used to study DRSS' public-private partnership agreements to determine if goals and objectives were established and whether or not the partnerships met those goals and objectives. This case study also included the development and testing of a proposed evaluation framework that will allow for consistent, systematic inquiry that can produce defensible assertions regarding the assessment and evaluation of public-private partnerships in education. </p><p> Results of the case study support the findings that utilization of an evaluation framework can serve to make public-private partnerships more successful. Results also indicated that establishment of goals and objectives enable effective evaluation for informal partnerships but could not be definitively stated for formal partnerships due to the lack of data points. The data from this case study revealed many emergent themes that should be considered in the development of future public-private partnerships. Overall this study contributes to the growing body of knowledge for public-private partnerships in education. </p>

<p> School Wide Positive Behavior Support (SW-PBS) is a current framework for schools to model their discipline strategies. SW-PBS has a framework built on identifying behaviors and predictors of their occurrence, routines to correct and prevent these problems, and implementation of these routines school wide to collect information to evaluate these strategies. Office discipline referrals were reviewed in the secondary school of Rural District 10 in Missouri from 2004-2013 to determine the significance between implementation of SW-PBS and the number of office discipline referrals. School climate was also studied in Rural District 10 as well as other secondary schools around the state of Missouri. A survey was sent to students, teachers and administrators from Rural District 10 and teachers and administrators from other districts around the state that have implemented SW-PBS for at least two years. The data revealed no statistically significance difference between the number of office discipline referrals before and during implementation of SW-PBS in Rural District 10. Based on the perceptions from the questions on the survey, teachers and administrators in Rural District 10 felt as though the climate and culture of the building overall was better compared to the perceptions of students in Rural District 10. Comparing Rural District 10 to other districts, Rural District 10 teachers and administrators felt as though the climate and culture of their secondary school was better, overall, as compared to other districts around the state of Missouri that have implemented SW-PBS for at least two years.</p>

<p> Educational leaders and experts claim that teachers are the number one classroom factor in the educational success of students (Marzano, 2007; Wong, 2009). This study determined there was not a significant correlation between the two teacher characteristics of advanced degree completion and years of experience. These are two of the more quantifiable and highly regarded teacher characteristics in the profession. The typical teacher salary is a major component of education that places high value on these two characteristics. There are many other policies and legislation, such as the No Child Left Behind Act, teacher tenure, hiring practices, and staff reduction policies that place the focus primarily on experience, degree completion, or a combination of the two. Data for the study were requested from rural school superintendents and elementary principals. These data were degree level completion and experience for third and fifth grade teachers, as well as the class mean scores for the Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) tests in communication arts and mathematics for those teachers. These numbers were analyzed using the Pearson <i> r</i> and multiple regression to determine whether the two teacher characteristics had a statistically significant effect on student scores. The study found no significant correlation between the two characteristics, advanced degree completion and years of experience, and the scores on the class standardized tests. These results question the effectiveness of using these two characteristics to distinguish teacher quality, and the high priority given to these characteristics. </p>

<p> The purpose of the current study was to understand if there are any longitudinal behavioral or academic effects for boys who are the youngest in their class, who have birthdays near or at the cutoff date for starting school and enter school at the beginning of the succeeding semester. The current study compares retention rates, behavioral records, and grade averages of boys who were born in the months of June, July, or August and are the youngest in their class in a state where the cutoff date for school enrollment is September first to those same variables in boys whose birthdates are in all other months of the year. The current study addresses whether boys who began school at a younger age ultimately struggle with academics or behavior once they are in high school, ninth through twelfth grade. The current study adds to the body of knowledge that currently exists regarding the practice of holding students back a year, known as academic redshirting. The current study employed non-experimental quantitative research methods using <i>ex post facto </i> analysis of existing data. The results of the current study show no significant longitudinal behavioral effects for boys who are the youngest in their class; however, there may be longitudinal academic effects for boys who are the youngest in their class. The results of the current study show non-summer born boys had a statistically significantly higher mean overall grade average than the summer born boys. Since the academic effects found in the current study were slight, the results of the current study support the argument that the phenomenon known as academic redshirting is not necessarily a useful practice when the decision to hold the child back is based solely on the student's summer birthdate.</p>

<p> The purpose of this quantitative study was to provide insight to the perspectives of leaders and individuals in authority within the Archdiocese of Los Angeles system of Catholic parochial schools regarding current models of governance, levels of authority, and decision-making processes. There is a lack of clearly-defined levels of decision-making authority from the bishops to the Archdiocesan Department of Catholic Schools down to the individual schools. </p><p> The pastors, principals, and Department of Catholic Schools personnel shared their perspectives of current governance structures and elements of three emerging alternative governance models. Data were analyzed through a factor analysis of the survey items to explore the strength of the three categories of the governance models represented by the three groups of questions. Next, the descriptive statistics of the specific questions relating to each of the three governance models and community voice were compiled. A Cronbach's alpha was calculated for each group of questions to measure internal consistency. </p><p> In order to explore relationships between perceptions among the three independent variable groups (pastors, principals, and Department of Catholic Schools personnel), a Chi-square analysis was run for each of the questions on an ordinal scale. </p><p> The study showed significant differences in participant responses between the three groups surveyed. However, there was agreement that community voice must be incorporated into governance, but only in a consultative manner. There was also agreement that a strong governing presence at the central office would be beneficial.</p>