Since the year of 2000, some of the country and city governments had already established regulations or sent out official documents to encourage the schools under them to implement ¡§Primary School After-School-Care Service¡¨. 2003, it is officially classified into Children and Youth Welfare Act as a part of the law, and established ¡§After-School-Care services for Primary schools and staff qualification standards¡¨ to propose to the whole country. Its goal is to encourage women to give birth and to enable the parents to work without burdens, especially for those families who are receiving double-income, so that their children can grow up healthy. Also, schools which are located in the mountains, remote areas, or islanders, aborigines have the privilege to establish first, and the care service have to match the work hours of the parents. This research is taking Zuo-Zheng, Tainan as sample, and is researching on the conditions of remote primary schools¡¦ After-School-Care Service. We interviewed the principals of the primary schools, the head of administrative organizations and unofficial groups, and also did survey on the parents. We used descriptive statistics to analyze, and make discusses on if it is correspondent with the needs and goals, if gaps are found during the execution of the policy, and related advices are made for references. The conclusion of the founding are listed below: 1. After-School-Cares at remote areas cannot meet the needs. 2. After-School-Cares at remote areas are facing difficulties. 3. After-School-Cares at remote areas did not practice well. 4. The idea of After-School-Care is lack of cognition. 5. The policy of After-School-Care is complex and lack of continuity. At last according to the founding, we came up with advices for government organization of education: 1. Establish supplementary measures according to different regions. 2. Enhance the propaganda of the policy to enable the establishment of common views.

Sachsen steht im Vergleich der Bundesländer wirtschaftlich und kulturell gut da. Die Pro-Kopf-Verschuldung ist vergleichsweise gering, die Investitionsquote hoch, die Förderung der kulturellen Infrastruktur ist vorbildlich. Dennoch drückt der Schuh: die Einwohnerzahl im Lande nimmt von 4,8 Mio. im Jahr 1990 auf ca. 3,9 Mio. im Jahr 2020 ab, das Durchschnittsalter steigt im gleichen Zeitraum auf 48,8 Jahre. Die Einnahmen liegen – bei doppelt so hoher Arbeitslosenzahl – noch deutlich hinter denen der westlichen Bundesländer zurück, der finanzielle Solidar-Transfer seit der Wiedervereinigung wird 2019 eingestellt und Jahr für Jahr um 200 Mio. EUR verringert, die EU-Förderung könnte 2013 wegbrechen. Vor diesem Hintergrund hat die Sächsische Staatskanzlei am 29. April 2009 ein strategisches Grundsatzpapier (Sachsen 2020. Wegweiser für unseren Freistaat) vorgestellt. Darin werden strategische Handlungsfelder, Ziele und Maßnahmen für Wirtschaft und Beschäftigung, Bildung und Lernen, Leben und Umwelt, Gesellschaft und Kultur sowie Staat und Verwaltung zur Diskussion gestellt.

An increasing number of students entering college lack the academic skills necessary to perform well at the college level, forcing professors and academic institutions to lower standards. Students approach higher education as a commodity, and as consumers they assert their desire for easier course work by giving poor evaluations to instructors whose courses they find too demanding or difficult. Eliminating student evaluations is one necessary change that will help reverse declining standards in higher education and increase performance; providing effective venues for supplemental instruction is another. Teaching basic writing skills in freshman composition courses would waste valuable instruction time that must be spent on higher-order concerns, such as critical thinking, abstract reasoning, essay development, and research skills. Online writing labs offer lower-order instruction in grammar, punctuation, syntax, and style for students at any level, as do the learning programs that accompany composition textbooks and handbooks, yet these resources are under-utilized by students who need the most help. Usability studies would reveal site-specific reasons students avoid or abandon them. This paper includes an initial view of two online writing resources from the perspective of usability: what works about the design and functionality, and what most likely does not.

Prevalence rates of youth prescribed psychotropic medications have risen dramatically over the past decade. Many of these medications are prescribed to treat symptoms of a disorder that occur in the school setting. Some medications have negative side effects that can inhibit academic and social performance. School psychologists have been identified as professionals who are equipped to assist in monitoring both the beneficial and negative effects of medications for youth attending school. This study investigated the practices, training, types of disorders for which medication monitoring occurs, facilitators, and barriers to school psychologists engaging in medication monitoring in the schools. Survey data from 166 members of the Florida Association of School Psychologists were collected and analyzed. Seventy four percent of respondents endorsed medication monitoring as an appropriate role for school psychologists. Approximately half of the respondents in this study reported engaging in medication monitoring over the past school year. Over half the sample reported receiving training related to medication monitoring. Weak relationships were found among demographic and training variables and reported medication monitoring practices. Additionally, none of the interactions between demographic, professional background, and training variables was predictive of medication monitoring practices. Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to developing strategies to promote the medication monitoring practices of school psychologists.

The Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) Model has been used to make many high-stakes decisions concerning schools, though it does not provide a complete assessment of student academic achievement and school effectiveness. To provide a clearer perspective, many states have implemented various Growth and Value Added Models, in addition to AYP. The purpose of this study was to examine two Value Added Model specifications, the Gain Score Model and the Layered Effects Model, to understand similarities and differences in school effect results. Specifically, this study correlated value added school effect estimates, which were derived from two model specifications and two outcome measures (mathematics and reading test scores). Existing data were obtained from a moderately large and rural school district in Florida. The outcome measures of 7,899 unique students were examined using the Gain Score Model and the Layered Effects Model to estimate school effects. Those school effect estimates were then used to calculate and examine the relationship between school rankings. Overall, the findings in this study indicated that the school effect estimates and school rankings were more sensitive to outcome measures than they were to model specifications. The mathematics and reading correlations from the Gain Score Model for school effects and school rankings were low (indicating high sensitivity), when advancing from Grades 4 to 5, and were moderate in other grades. The mathematics and reading correlations from the Layered Effects Model were low at Grade 5 for school effects and school rankings, as were the correlations at Grade 7 for the school rankings. In the other grades, correlations were moderate to high (indicating lower sensitivity). Correlations between the Gain Score Model and the Layered Effects Model from mathematics were high in each grade for both school effects and school rankings. Reading correlations were also high for each of the grades. These results were similar to the findings of previous school effects research and added to the limited body of literature. Depending upon the outcome measure used, school effects and rankings can vary significantly when using Value Added Models. These models have become a popular component in educational accountability systems, yet there is no one perfect model. If used, these models should be used cautiously, in addition to other accountability approaches.

Performance incentives in education has frequently been presented in purely rational choice economic terms, looking to see if the input of an incentive produced the desired output of student achievement. Such research has continually failed to produce significant effects. This dissertation attempts to recast incentives in terms of human capital theory and human behavioral economics, looking at the impact of social capital and support structures on teacher response to incentives. This study examines a major performance pay program in Texas using a concurrent-nested, mixed methods design. It finds that an external motivator like incentives is only effective in the presence of factors of internal motivation and that social capital positively affects the impact of a performance incentive. / text

As systems of accountability and efficiency continue to permeate public education institutions it is important that research engage the various factors that embody how these systems come to be, whose knowledge gains access to informing their designs, and whose interests are served. Texas has long been recognized as a testing ground for such policy designs, although researchers’ points of departure on such systems have solely focused on the outcomes of these policies in practice. Research on the political construction and discourses that define the underlying goals of these systems continue to be ignored by researchers. Analyses of Texas-inspired federal policies have also predominantly taken an outcomes-based approach, or at most have had episodic engagements with political processes peering down from the balcony to observe the interaction of the obvious actors. To this end, this three-year ethnographic study conceptually and methodologically engages the various dimensions—such as race, class, history, interest, power, and agency—that embody the political lineage of Texas’ new system of Accountability and College Readiness across various contexts. This study further contributes to the dearth of literature that examines the role of research and university researchers in policy debates, and the limits and possibilities of politically engaged scholars in such processes. / text

This research developed the first ‘Green’ model for primary school leadership, which aimed to address some of the actual and anticipated environmental problems through the way schools operate in the context of Curriculum, Campus and Community. It emerged through an empirical investigative study of eight English primary school Head Teachers who are pioneering environmental sustainability. A Post-modern perspective influenced the research methodology and helped to take a fresh and sceptical look at the leadership aims of primary schools in relation to the education system and general society. This involved a critical examination of the National College of School Leadership’s ‘Leadership for Sustainability’ and literature from the ‘Green Movement’. The findings suggested that leaders are needed with a certain kind of ‘Green’ values, knowledge and skills. Questions arose about how a type of ‘Distributed Leadership’ might lie within the new model and whether the model is feasible, given that the pursuance of its main objectives are not currently the priority of most schools. The thesis pointed to the need for a radical revision of what it means to be a primary school leader, in order to assist with the imperatives of a green sustainable economy which promises a better quality of life for more people. This is a ‘Big Claim’ for a small-scale study. It is hoped, therefore, that this modest thesis could be a catalyst for more wide-ranging research and thinking in this most vital area, in terms of education leadership’s role in securing the viability of modern civilisation.

Chapter 1 begins with the motivation of my study in teachers' labor market. I employ a monopolistic screening model to show that there exist multiple equilibria in the educational system; a pooling equilibrium and a separating equilibrium. The model predicts that the pooling equilibrium is optimal only when the average quality of teacher applicants is high. Using data from the OECD, I examine the relation between teachers' earnings and teacher quality of the U.S. and Korea. Chapter 2 focuses on teachers and their career dynamics, and the data is at teacher level. Using the Current Population Survey for 2001-2010, I show that public school teachers are paid less compared to other comparable college graduates in non-teaching sectors. By studying the change in earnings after career changes, I find the evidence of positive selection when teachers move into the non-teaching sectors and of negative selection when non-teachers move into the teaching sector, which results in the decrease in the average teacher quality. Chapter 3 looks at both teachers and school districts, and I use district-teacher matched dataset, based on the School and Staffing Survey (SASS) for 2007-2008. I employ a multilevel model and a propensity score matching to identify union effects in states with different legal environments for collective bargaining of teachers. I find that collective bargaining is neither necessary nor sufficient for unions to affect teachers' well-being. I show that meet-and-confer is a popular alternative to collective bargaining and that it is an important mechanism for unions to influence teachers' non-wage benefits. Chapter 4 concerns school districts, and I use SASS district level data. I reevaluate the role of teachers unions on pay structure and districts' financial status. In contrasts to previous findings, I find that the variance of teachers' earnings is higher in more unionized settings. Moreover, I show that the financial status of districts with teachers unions is stronger than that of districts without the unions. I confirm that unionism is associated with less usage of performance pay system. / Economics

Korean education policies were derived from the 5.31 Education Reform oriented to the increase of autonomy and accountability for school effectiveness and the quality instruction through teacher professionalism enhancement. The policies are related to the influences of historical events and contexts embedded in the interactions of policy players who have their own arguments, particularly professionalism versus managerialism. The policies have been driven by right-wing perspectives. As a result, the roles, powers, functions, and structures of teaching profession have gradually changed. From the structural analysts, Basil Bernstein and Michel Foucault, teaching profession has become a system of supervision, compliance, normalization, isomorphism related to the collection code. The dynamic, complex and multilevel policy implementation need to be analyzed from a multifocal approach coupled with historical institutional, political, and structural analysis. This analysis contributes to understanding the changes of teaching profession resulted from intricate and dynamic interactions embedded in policy environments causing or influencing policy implementation directly and indirectly. Korean educational policy analysts, generally, tend to use one of the institutional, the political, and the structural perspective. Most policy analyses are concerned with the political analysis focused on exploring the political interaction between policy players, presenting policy issues and alternatives, analyzing the new institutionalism of education policy formation and implementation process, and influencing of policies on school organization and teachers apart from the political environment and the political interactions. In this respect, the multifocal policy analysis will be beneficial to shed light on a multifocal analysis of Korean educational policies. / text