scholarly journals Tick Bite Risk and Tick‐Borne Disease Perceptions of School District Administrators in the Mid‐Atlantic United States

2019 ◽  
Vol 89 (12) ◽  
pp. 959-968
Author(s):  
Erika T. Machtinger ◽  
Andrew Y. Li ◽  
Yifen Liu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
School District ◽  
Tick Bite ◽  
District Administrators ◽  
School District Administrators ◽  
Tick Borne Disease ◽  
Perceptions Of School

Planning and Implementation of a Small-Scale 1-to-1 Pilot Program for Using E-Readers in Elementary School Classrooms

2013 ◽  
pp. 12-31
Author(s):  
Margaret L. Rice ◽  
Deborah Camp ◽  
Karen Darroch ◽  
Ashley FitzGerald
Keyword(s):  
School District ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Pilot Program ◽  
Inappropriate Use ◽  
District Administrators ◽  
School District Administrators ◽  
Teachers And Students ◽  
Conducting Research ◽  
5Th Grade

A P-12 school district implemented a pilot program providing e-readers to 45 students in a 4th and a 5th grade class. The school district administrators’ goal was to determine whether it would be feasible for the district to provide technological devices to individual district students for use at school and home, beginning with a small pilot. If the pilot proved successful, the devices would be provided to additional students throughout the district. The first step was the selection of the devices. After conducting research, the Nook from Barnes & Noble was selected. Issues to be addressed included inappropriate use of Nooks by students and parents, teachers’ and students’ learning the nuances of the devices, dropped network connections, students’ forgetting to bring Nooks to school, and unrealistic parent expectations for teacher use. This chapter informs readers of successes, problems, and lessons learned from the planning and implementation of the pilot program.

scholarly journals Understanding the Organizational Implementation Context of Schools: A Qualitative Study of School District Administrators, Principals, and Teachers

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 379-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill Locke ◽  
Kristine Lee ◽  
Clayton R. Cook ◽  
Lindsay Frederick ◽  
Cheryl Vázquez-Colón ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
School District ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
District Administrators ◽  
School District Administrators ◽  
Implementation Context

A Counternarrative Autoethnography Exploring School Districts’ Role in Reproducing Racism: Willful Blindness to Racial Inequities

2015 ◽  
Vol 117 (8) ◽  
pp. 1-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad A. Khalifa ◽  
Felecia Briscoe
Keyword(s):  
School District ◽  
School Districts ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
District Level ◽  
Achievement Gaps ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Administrative Practices ◽  
District Administrators ◽  
Phone Calls ◽  
School District Administrators

Background Racialized suspension gaps are logically and empirically associated with racial achievement gaps and both gaps indicate the endurance of racism in American education. In recent U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Office of Civil Rights data, it was revealed that nationally, Black boys are four times more likely to be suspended than White boys. In some geographic areas and for certain offenses, some intersections of race, class, and gender are dozens of times more likely to be suspended for than others. Although most educational leaders and district-level official express disapproval of racism in schools, racialized gaps in achievement and discipline stubbornly persist. Purpose/Objective The purpose of this study was to examine how school district-level administrators react to investigations and indications of racism in their school districts. It is relevant because in many school districts that have disciplinary and achievement gaps, the administrators ostensibly and publically express a hope to reduce or eliminate the racist trends. Yet, one administration after another, they seem unable to disrupt the racially oppressive discipline and achievement gaps. In this study, we examined administrators’ responses to our requests about their districts’ racialized disaggregated disciplinary data, and their responses to our sharing of our findings with them. We use counternarrative autoethnography to describe that school district administrators play a significant role in maintaining practices that reproduce racial oppression in schools. Setting This study was conducted in large urban school districts in Texas. The profiled districts were predominantly Latino; however one district was over 90% Latino and the other just slightly more than half with sizable White and Black student populations in some schools and areas. Participants As this is an autoethnography, we are the primary participants of this study; we interrogate our experiences with school district administrators in our investigations of racial disciplinary gaps. Research Design Our autoethnography is counternarrative, as it counters bureaucratic narratives of impartiality, colorblindness, and objectivity espoused by school districts. In addition to our own self-interviews, we base our counternarrative on the examination of 11 phone calls and 35 email exchanges with district administration, and on field-notes taken during seven site visits. These collective experiences and data sources informed our counternarratives, and led to our findings. Our research encompasses three phases. The initial phase was our attempt to obtain disciplinary data from various school districts in Texas. Only two school districts made the data accessible to us, despite being legally obligated to do so. For the second phase of our study we calculated risk ratios from those two school districts to determine how many more times African Americans and Latinos are suspended than Whites in all of the schools of TXD1 and TXD2. The third phase was the district administrators’ reactions to our presentation of our findings in regards to their district schools with the most egregious disciplinary gaps. Based on the administrative responses to them, we thought that it was important to highlight our experiences through a counternarrative autoethnography. Conclusions From our qualitative data analysis we theorize three bureaucratic administrative responses contributed to the maintenance of racism in school—(1) the administrators discursive avoidance of issues of racial marginalization; (2) the tendency of bureaucratic systems to protect their own interests and ways of operating, even those ways of operating that are racist; and (3), the (perhaps inadvertent) protection of leadership practices that have resulted in such racial marginalization. These responses were enacted through four technical–rational/bureaucratic administrative practices: subversive, defensive, ambiguous, and negligent.

scholarly journals A mixed-methods study: Districts’ implementation of language classification policies and the implications for male, Hispanic, and low-income middle school students

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcela Reyes ◽  
Thurston Domina
Keyword(s):  
English Language Learners ◽  
School District ◽  
Low Income ◽  
English Language ◽  
School Students ◽  
Ell Students ◽  
District Administrators ◽  
School District Administrators ◽  
Unified School District ◽  
Language Classification

California state policy requires English language learners (ELL) to pass the California English Language Development Test and the California Standards Test in English Language Arts to be Reclassified Fluent English Proficient (RFEP). However, most districts make it more difficult for ELL students to reclassify by setting reclassification requirements that are more stringent than the state-mandated requirement. In this paper, we examine the reclassification process for two California school districts. In Manzanita Unified School District, administrators describe a system that explicitly provides a role for parents and teachers to influence reassignment decisions. In Granada Unified School District, administrators describe a system that is exclusively test-driven. Nevertheless, these two approaches yield similar reclassification outcomes. In both districts, male, Hispanic, and low-income ELL students are less likely to take or pass the required assessments. Even among students who do pass the assessments male, Hispanic, and low-income students are still less likely to be reclassified. We draw upon the notion of tight- and loose-coupling in educational organizations to make sense of this disconnect between ELL reclassification policies and reclassification outcomes in these two districts. We recommend administrators and teachers work together to establish but also implement their district’sobjec language classification policies.

scholarly journals National strategy for supporting school principal’s instructional leadership

2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (5) ◽  
pp. 540-553 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marit Aas ◽  
Jan Merok Paulsen
Keyword(s):  
School District ◽  
Instructional Leadership ◽  
Distributed Leadership ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Leadership Practices ◽  
School Principals ◽  
Teaching Staff ◽  
Content Type ◽  
District Administrators ◽  
School District Administrators

Purpose A number of empirical studies and evaluations in Norway and Sweden shows variabilities in the degree to which the municipalities succeed in their endeavors to support school principals’ instructional leadership practices. In response to this situation, the Norwegian and Swedish directorates of education have developed a joint collaborative design for practice learning of instructional leadership. Based on findings from two separate studies, the purpose of this paper is to contribute to theory development and improved practice for school district administrators and their subordinated school leaders. Design/methodology/approach The study draws on the data from participants who completed the program in June 2015, June 2016 and June 2017, respectively. The data are based on individual reflection documents from students on their learning and new leadership practices 4 months, 16 months and 28 months after the end of the program. Findings The project subjected to this study, labeled “Benchlearning,” involved learning from experiences of others, observational learning, dialogic group learning and in the final round translating what is learnt into the social and cultural context in which the individual school principal’s school is situated. When participating school principals experience observation-based learning together with trusted colleagues, followed by vicarious learning from these experiences in their schools, the authors see some facilitating factors to be of particular importance: learning infrastructure, digital tools, compulsory tasks associated with preparation and subsequent experiments with their teachers. Emerging from the analysis was a systematic balancing act of autonomy and structure running through the various learning activities. Finally, a strong evidence was found that developing core competence in digital learning and formative assessment among teaching staff required enhanced distributed leadership across the whole school organization. By sharing leadership tasks on instructional issues with teachers and other non-leaders, principals succeeded in leveling up instructional leadership significantly. Research limitations/implications The implications of the study can be summed up in the following four principles. First, policy makers should take into accounts the fact that principals’ motivation and willingness to initiate change processes can be created in a synergy between structured school visits and engagement in learning groups based on a sound theoretical foundation. Second, within a socially contracted practice in a well-designed learning group, it is possible to raise principals’ level of self-efficacy. Third, a systematic reflection process on authentic practice is an example of how principals can develop their metacognitive capacity and how knowledge can be transformed into new practice. Finally, educators should be trained to be process leaders in order to create a balance between demand and support in promoting principals’ learning of new instructional leadership practices. Practical implications School district administrators should take into accounts the fact that changing practices will be supported by sense-making processes involving discussions about how new instructional practices are justified. Specifically, shifts in talk and actions will also involve shifts in the ways people relate to each other and how they relate to their internal context. Further, leadership programs should include trying out new practices as the focal learning mode, accompanied by individual and collective reflective activities. Originality/value The findings of the study underscore the mutual interdependence of distributed leadership and student-centered focus accompanied with the school’s learning capacity as enabling conditions for principals’ practice learning in the field of instructional leadership.

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