Past Projects

• No Small Thing: Managing Innovation in Urban Public School Districts.
  Dr. Meredith I. Honig, Principal Investigator.
  This study involves an in-depth examination of school district central offices' participation in the implementation of new small autonomous schools initiatives. Data come from a comparative case study encompassing over 200 interviews and document reviews in Oakland, CA and Chicago, IL. Theories of organizational learning, innovation, and knowledge utilization serve as the conceptual framework. Early findings highlight that productive roles for central office administrators in the early years of implementation involve "building their plane while flying it"- developing basic district policies and practices for implementation after school-level implementation already has begun. Entrepreneurial central office administrators help implementation by brokering new district-school-community relationships. Early implementation challenges include how to manage a series of tradeoffs fundamental to the implementation process. Conclusions address specific policies that central offices may want to establish during the start-up years and support for central office administrators in managing the inherent unpredictability of their new roles in implementation.
  
  Related Publications > Occasional Papers (OP-02-1, OP-03-1)

• An Economic Analysis of Teacher Quality versus Teacher Quantity: Tensions and Trade-offs.
  Dr. Jennifer K. Rice, Principal Investigator.
  This research project was designed to examine the tensions embedded in two of the most strongly supported current policy emphases affecting teachers. One favors higher teacher quality through policies that require teachers to meet more rigorous standards thereby limiting the supply of qualified teachers available to schools. The other supports hiring more teachers to decrease class sizes, a strategy that increases the demand for teachers and, hence, relies on an increase in supply. While both types of enhancements to the teaching force may be necessary to improve student achievement, particularly for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, the high costs and limited teacher supply necessitate difficult choices, at least in the short term. This study draws on the discipline of economics to explore the trade-offs between teacher quantity and teacher quality. The analysis uses extant evidence to consider the cost-effectiveness of approaches to enhancing these two aspects of the teaching force.
  
  
• National Board Certification as Professional Development: Pathways to Success.
  Dr. Jennifer K. Rice, Principal Investigator.
  Dr. Jennifer King Rice, in collaboration with The Finance Project and Policy Studies Associates, conducted a study designed to develop a base of knowledge that can inform future investments in teachers' professional development through the National Board Certification (NBC) process. This two-year study addressed several fundamental questions related to the most significant factors in the NBC preparation process; the resources required to support teachers during the NBC process; the cost of NBC support programs and the broader certification process; the distribution of the cost burden across various stakeholder groups; and the level of investment required for NBC support programs compared to other common approaches to teacher professional development. Project researchers used data from five key sources: 1) interviews, 2) focus groups, 3) document review, 4) the NBPTS national database, and 5) existing data on the costs of other forms of professional development. Researchers integrated qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis to identify the extent to which elements of formal NBC support programs, as well as other factors including characteristics of the teachers themselves and conditions in teachers' professional environments, help NBC candidates attain certification. Data on the wide array of resources devoted to NBC support programs were collected and were analyzed in cost templates developed by the research team to estimate the total cost of the support programs and the NBC process, the costs associated with specific professional development activities embedded in the NBC preparation process, well as the distribution of the cost burden across different individuals and organizations involved in these initiatives. Findings from this research provide information on the investments necessary to effectively prepare and support teachers who seek NBC.
  
  Related Publications: Report- National Board Certification as professional development: What does it cost and how does it compare?
  
  
• Teacher Quality: Understanding the Effectiveness of Teacher Attributes.
  Dr. Jennifer K. Rice, Principal Investigator.
  This study involved a comprehensive, systematic examination of the empirical literature on the relationship between teacher attributes and their effectiveness with the goal of informing policy on investing in teacher quality. All studies included in the review had to be a peer-reviewed empirical study of the relationship between policy-relevant teacher characteristics and measures of teacher performance. All studies were from the past three decades and focused on education in the U.S. The goal of the review was not to "boil down" the studies to quantitative summaries of what matters, but rather to synthesize the literature in ways that bring qualitative meaning to the array of studies that have been conducted. The resulting book, Teacher Quality: Understanding the Effectiveness of Teacher Attributes, provides a set of implications for both teacher policy and future teacher policy research.
  
  Related Publications: Teacher Quality: Understanding the Effectiveness of Teacher Attributes
  
  
• The Twenty-First Century Schools Initiative (Co-sponsored by the International Center for Transcultural Education).
  Dr. Barbara Finkelstein, Principal Investigator.
  Drs. Barbara Finkelstein (PI), Robert Croninger, Betty Malen, and Jennifer King Rice from the Department of Education Policy and Leadership at the University of Maryland, conducted an open-ended search for intended and unintended effects of a reconstitution venture as well as a more focused search for evidence regarding the "theory of action" embedded in this particular approach to education reform. To map reform developments across levels of the system and across stages of the process (from the initial adoption through the first two years of implementation), the research team: reviewed documents; conducted nearly 400 interviews with district officials, building administrators, teachers, program area specialists, parents and community residents; and observed multiple planning meetings, professional development workshops, classrooms, and school events. These data were used to develop an interim report and a final report for the district and the study sites. These data have been disseminated in multiple national conference papers and three published articles.
  
  Related Publications:
  Malen, B., Croninger, R., Muncey, D. & Jones, D. (2002). "Reconstituting schools: Testing the Theory of action," Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 24, (2), 113-132.
  
  Redmond Jones, D. & Malen, B. (2002) "Sources of victory, seeds of defeat: Linking enactment politics and implementation developments," in W. Hoy & C. Miskel (Eds.) Theory and Research in Educational Administration, Inaugural volume, 41-76.
  
  Rice, J.K., & Croninger, R.G. (2005). Resource generation, reallocation, or depletion. An analysis of the impact of reconstitution on school capacity. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 4, 73-103.
  
  Rice, J.K. & Malen, B. (2003) "The human costs of education reform: The case study of school reconstitution," Educational Administration Quarterly, 39, 5, 635-666.
  
  Rice, J.K. & Malen, B. (2004) "A framework for assessing the impact of education reforms on school capacity: insights from studies of high-stakes accountability initiatives," Educational Policy, 18, 5, 631-660.
  
  
• The Quest for School Improvement: A Case Study of Park Hall Elementary School's Approach to School Improvement.
  Dr. Betty L. Malen, Principal Investigator.
  Conducted as part of the school district's effort to assist Title I schools and to comply with the evaluation component of the Maryland State Department of Education's School Accountability Funding for Excellence (SAFE) initiative, this case study examined an elementary school's efforts to develop and implement programs and practices that might improve school performance as gauged by district and state indicators. The study was based on district and site level documents (e.g., parent and faculty surveys, school improvement plans, templates and guidelines, test scores); on in-depth interviews with 80 individuals (district and building administrators, teachers, program area specialists, parents); and over 100 hours of scripted observations of classroom teaching, school improvement team meetings, teacher planning sessions, professional development workshops and faculty meetings. The project provided information for local educators and was disseminated as part of a broader analysis of the impact of accountability policies on school capacity for improved performance.