research_report

Nearly half of Washington school districts issued layoff notices to teachers and other school staff during the 2008-09 school year. This report examines the impact of Reduction in Force (RIF) notices issued in Washington state during this time. Among teachers who received a RIF notice, 87 % were rehired in the K-12 education system in Washington in the subsequent year.

This Research Report looks at the role that policies concerning curriculum, professional development, and mentoring in two reform-active districts played in shaping the experiences and concerns of three first-year language arts teachers.

Drawing from empirical studies and the landscape of current practice, this report explores ideas related to how educational leaders access data, the meanings they give to it, and the uses to which they put these data in the varying settings in which leaders seek to improve teaching and learning. Moving away from the potentially appealing rhetoric that data can provide clear, indisputable direction for future action (e.g. data-driven decision making), the notion of data-informed leadership captures the complex and often ambiguous nature of data use in educational settings.

Derived from a study of beginning language arts teachers (see District Policy and Beginning Teachers: Where the Twain Shall Meet, elsewhere on this web site), this Research Report captures the ways curriculum (or its absence) guides what is learned level about instructional practice, and how, by new language arts teachers in secondary schools. The report underscores how potent curriculum policy can be for shaping teachers' early attempts to establish a secure professional repertoire.