2012 UCEA Convention

Teacher Migration: An Ecological Exploration of Teacher Transfers in a Reform Environment. Craig Dennis Hochbein, University of Louisville; Bradley W. Carpenter, University of Louisville
This article assesses the impact of the Title I School Improvement Grant program’s personnel replacement policy on teacher employment patterns within a large urban school district. Hannan & Freeman’s (1977) population ecology model serves as the conceptual framework for this study, allowing the authors to consider schools within Persistently Low Achieving districts as individual organisms nested within a larger organizational ecosystem where teachers are viewed as finite resources for which school leaders must compete.

Innovation Leaders Academy: Sustaining innovative in high need districts. Thomas Alsbury, Seattle Pacific University
This study reports on the initial findings of an NSF-funded grant project focused on organizational assessment and district-wide strategic planning called the Innovation Leaders Academy (ILA). The ILA partnership offers a unique district-level program intended to build district capacity for sustainable innovation focused on improving program quality and student success. Findings support contextually developed, flexible, and responsive district-level strategic teaming and organizational systems analysis to build sustainable innovation capacity in high-need districts.

Any incentives? In need of improvement status and principal hiring. Hajime Mitani, Peabody College, Vanderbilt University
This paper examines whether schools placed in need of improvement (INI) status by the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act hire principals with stronger qualifications. Using multiple data sets from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the US Department of Education, I estimated the effect of the INI status on principal hiring. Neither OLS nor propensity score matching estimators show statistically significant results.

A study of the functions and effectiveness of school governance in Hong Kong schools. Paula Kwan, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Frank Wai Ming Tam, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
In the wake of Hong Kong Government’s amendments to the Education Ordinance requiring all schools to establish an incorporated management committee (IMC) to oversee school management, schools are obliged to adopt a new governance structure. This study attempts to understand the roles and responsibilities of IMC members in the reform era, using a quantitative study targeting around 1,000 respondents from 80 school IMCs. The implications of the new policy to local schools will be discussed.