This dissertation examines the impact of the 1992 Georgia Tort Claims Act on educators in court decisions involving liability cases against Georgia school districts and/ or their respective employees. By examining pertinent court cases in which Georgia educators were, for the first time, subjected to potential litigation, the researcher outlines circumstances in which educators can and should be held liable for their actions. Additionally, the researcher analyzes the Tort Claims Acts of Texas, Oklahoma, and Mississippi as well. This analysis allows the researcher to contrast the types of litigious actions that educators in each of these states are held liable. Findings include the types of actions in which educators in each of the respective states are subject to liability. Case study analysis of randomly selected court cases involving tort liability, provides the infrastructure for in-depth research allowing the following questions to be addressed: (1) How have Georgia courts interpreted the Georgia Tort Claims Act in litigation against school personnel and school districts? (2) How do tort liability rulings, involving school personnel or districts, in other states within the United States compare with similar cases filed in Georgia since 1992? The Georgia Tort Claim Act of 1992 propelled an array of circumstances in which educational entities would be held liable for their actions. This research clearly explains the types of actions in which educators in the state of Georgia are subject to suit and to what degree they are subsequently held liable. Case study research also uncovered specific areas in which Georgia educators can be held liable. Specific research involving actions deemed either ministerial or discretionary are detailed specifically through case analysis. Additionally, the degree to which liability insurance provides protection for educational entities or their respective employees is also addressed in this research in order that state-by-state comparisons can be understood.

Thesis advisor: Robert J. Starratt / Despite its provision of sustained, targeted, job-embedded professional development to teachers, instructional coaching, which school districts across the United States have introduced in efforts to midwife instructional improvement, has occasionally suffered the same fate as countless other attempts at school reform. While programs of instructional coaching have endured and become institutionalized in many districts, they have been discontinued in others. Additionally, while the literature reports that instructional coaching in this country originated, and has remained popular, in urban school districts, it is all-but-silent about programs in suburban settings. The present, qualitative research study examined three suburban school districts in efforts to answer the following research question: How do suburban school districts' unique contexts impact the implementation, maintenance, and success of their instructional coaching programs? Case studies of three suburban school districts in Massachusetts were assembled from data collected during semi-structured interviews with twenty-two educators from across the three districts. Resulting data were analyzed across cases through the lens of complexity science, in order that the three school districts, and their programs of instructional coaching, could be explored - if not completely understood - in all their complexity. This investigation found that, while the roll-out of a district's instructional coaching program need not have been a grand event, it was nevertheless essential for faculty members to understand the rationale for the establishment of the program and the role to be played by their schools' coaches. It confirmed assertions in the existing literature that trust is an essential ingredient in any instructional coaching program. It also served to confirm that administrators contribute to the success of instructional coaching programs when they are actively engaged in supporting them. This investigation found, further, that instructional coaching programs, and the schools in which they function, demonstrate key aspects of complex systems. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Education.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2000. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 162-170). Also available on the Internet.

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The purpose of this study was to design a model through which categories and characteristics of reading programs and organizational models could be integrated to form a decision-making base for interrelating the functions of a public school reading department into the overall organizational structure of a school district. No experimental design was used for this study, nor was there any use of human subjects. This study was not stated to statistical terms. Models were used to inform or establish some of the relationships that were judged to exist between data collected and the conclusions reached. The scope of this study was both theoretical and structural in nature. The limitations were identified in the scarcity of available research on the bases for organizational models and on the absence of comparative integrating models for placing reading departments into an organizational structure. This study was directed toward the development of a model that could be utilized for the creation of a school district organizational composite to facilitate more effective planning, development and implementation for reading department programs within the composite. Parameters and guidelines to be used in the examination of organizational ideas and reading department functions were established. The procedures used included library research of literature on models and model building, a basis for model structure, distinctions regarding criteria for models, and a way of classifying models. Criteria were set for identifying a school district model that could be used as exemplary where each organizational function was identified. Six randomly selected school districts were chosen and analyzed for the place of a reading department in their district organizational structure. To gather the necessary data, four procedures were employed: (1)site visitations to three of the six school districts and interviewing the person(s) responsible for the reading department operation; (2)telephone interviews; information from two school districts was secured in this fashion; (3)collection of all available written materials, from each of the six school districts, concerning personnel involved in the reading department through organizational formats showing lines of authority, administrative responsibilities of reading personnel through job descriptions leveled under the generic categories of policy/planning, developing/interrelating, implementing/supervising, as well as reading department responsibilities by administrative divisions using the generic categories mentioned heretofore; and (4) charting data collected to provide information on personnel responsibilities and lines of authority. No significant differences were found between the goals of the different school districts. The sets of parameters for the reading programs within the total organizational support systems of these districts were basically uniform for the districts. However, a comprehensive model for a district reading program with an organizational support design should emerge from a reading department design that is interwoven throughout the programmatic offerings in a district. The most generic conclusion of this study was that the model used by the reading department should either be a microcosm of the overall district model or it should provide an illustrative example of how a generic or unifying model can function.

Thesis (M. Ed.)--University of Toronto, 2005.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 2007. / Title from title page screen, viewed on July 16, 2008. Dissertation Committee: Elizabeth T. Lugg (chair), Beth Hatt-Echeverria, Diane R. Dean, Norman D. Durflinger. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 220-227) and abstract. Also available in print.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 1997. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 72-76). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University, 1995. / Includes tables. Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Sponsor: Margaret Terry Orr. Dissertation Committee: Jonathan T. Hughes. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 194-201).

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University, 1995. / Includes tables. Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Sponsor: Jeannette Fleischner. Dissertation Committee: Frank L. Smith, Jr. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 183-189).