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Program efficacy and outcomes can often be determined through an examination of collaborative activities between and among inner city school districts with high dropout rates and private, public, and nonprofit organizations. Kettl (2004) adeptly describes additional collaborative practice trends that not only transform governance structures, but blurs the line between and among sectors. These trends illuminate the need for governmental agencies to collaborate with nonprofit and for-profit organizations to address “wicked problems” where no single organization has sufficient resources and the consequences are enormous. The paper aims to discuss theses issues.

Utilizing a quantitative approach, this research compares the efficacy of a newly developed collaborative alternative education program to existing programs in New Jersey's Newark Public Schools during 2008-2009.

The results indicate that the overall performance of the students enrolled in the new research models is significantly higher than in the existing program due to incentives and not administrative collaboration.

Implications for future research include: first, the need for studies to reveal enduring, universal effects of collaboration; second, longitudinal studies of the effects of collaboration on alternative education issues; and third, an evaluation of the effectiveness of collaborative training.

This research intends to contribute to the literature concerning these distinctive types of partnerships – specifically the integration of three very different systems into a collaborative service. This single case study presents support of how these services subsist within four settings and what force they have on special services for students in alternative education in the public schools.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a new conceptual model integrating research, university-community partnerships, and an innovative undergraduate team approach to more effectively and efficiently address social problems while enhancing university-community relations and providing valuable learning experiences for students.

The paper describes the rationale for, and the key components, steps, and activities involved in piloting the conceptual model of university-community engagement. The model integrates research, community engagement, and undergraduate development and education along with ongoing evaluation by the relevant stakeholders.

As illustrated in a brief case study presentation, the model has significant promise in meeting several university and community objectives simultaneously. Specifically, it focusses on community needs by addressing a mutually agreed upon social issue, it builds and strengthens university-community relationships as a partnership of equals, and it promotes undergraduate development and learning in a way that integrates knowledge and service to society. Specific outcomes in each area are summarized.

This approach is a viable option for university and college professors interested in synthesizing several important foci: research, developing and sustaining university-community partnerships, and undergraduate development and learning.

The initial experience with the model indicates that it is an efficient and effective means for colleges and universities to simultaneously meet the goals of education, individual and collective citizenship, community engagement, and research productivity.

This paper is one of seven in this volume, each elaborating different approaches to quality improvement in education. The purpose of this paper is to delineate a methodology called positive deviance.

The paper presents the origins, theoretical foundations, core principles and a case study demonstrating an application of positive deviance in US education, specifically dealing with the problem of high school dropout prevention in a California school district.

The six phases of this “asset-based” improvement approach are: define the organizational or community problem and desired outcomes; determine common practices relevant to the problem; discover uncommon but successful behaviors and strategies that solve the problem (the positive deviants), through inquiry and observation; design an action learning initiative based on findings; discern (monitor) progress of the initiative by documenting and evaluating regularly; and disseminate results through sharing, honoring and amplifying success stories.

Few theoretical treatments and demonstration cases are currently available on commonly used models of quality improvement from business, manufacturing and other fields that have potential value in improving education systems internationally. This paper fills this gap by elucidating one promising approach. By facilitating a comparison of the positive deviance approach to other quality improvement approaches treated in this volume, the paper provides added value.

To identify the attitudes and traits of teachers with an at‐risk student population in a multi‐cultural urban high school.

A research team consisting of doctoral students and their faculty advisor used an appreciative inquiry model to identify attitudes and traits of teachers who supported effective teaching in an urban high school with a high at‐risk student population.

The research team's findings indicate that those perceived as effective teachers were culturally responsive, sought small successes, encouraged students, flexible, and caring. They also formed meaningful relationships with students, had caring attitudes, and viewed themselves as difference‐makers. The research team also found a number of non‐supportive teacher attitudes and traits: blaming, racial attitudes, frustration leading to inflexibility, co‐dependency leading to encouraging the neediness of students, and lack of respect for the contributions made by the surrounding community and parents.

Teachers, administrators, and counselors agreed that forming relationships and caring for students were at the core of the attitudes and traits of effective teaching. Moreover, teachers with effective attitudes and traits were seen as having the ability to integrate into the school and surrounding community's culture to encourage students to succeed in school.

Inclusive education in the United States has been a focus of government policy for the past 30 years. The underlying goals of the inclusive education movement are to provide the most efficient and effective education in the least restrictive environment for students with disabilities. In response to federal and state mandates, students with disabilities increasingly are being educated in more inclusive settings. One way to measure the success of inclusion is to examine graduation rates for students with disabilities. Although accountability related to state curriculum standards and standardized test scores is important, graduation rates may be the critical factor in deciding whether current educational policy is resulting in successful outcomes for students. To determine the effects of inclusion, a statewide study was conducted to look for trends in inclusion and corresponding graduation rates for students with mild disabilities. The researchers examined the records of 67,749 students with mild disabilities in Georgia during a six-year period to determine the amount of time spent in general education classrooms and the graduation rates for each year’s cohort of students. Results indicated a 62% increase in the percentage rate in inclusion for students with mild disabilities, while graduation rates for students with mild disabilities remained stable (+0.4%) at less than 30% during that same period. This chapter will describe the results of this study, discuss barriers to graduation, and present inclusive practices that support students with mild disabilities.

The purpose of this study is to examine the prevalence and association among school refusal behavior, self-esteem, parental school involvement and aggression in punctual and truant school-going adolescents.

A purposive sampling technique and cross-sectional design were used in the current study. Participants comprised three heterogeneous sub-groups: school truant students, park truant students and punctual students.

This study’s findings indicated that father and mother’s school involvement was related to more elevated level of self-esteem for school truant students. Results also indicated that male truant students had more significant probability to school refusal behavior and physical aggression as compared to female truant students. Moreover, results revealed that physical aggression fully mediated among mother’s school involvement, academic self and school refusal behavior in punctual students and school truant students.

There is more need to develop indigenous school-based preventions and interventions aimed at decreasing school truancy in Pakistani context by tackling the predisposing vulnerable factors and supporting and encouraging the protective family and internal factors.

International assessment data consistently indicate that when compared to their peers from other major developed nations, American students, irrespective of their race, underperform in reading and mathematics (Darling Hammond, 2010; NCES, 2011; PIRLS, 2011; PISA, 2009; TIMSS, 2011). Within an American context, African American males generally have the lowest reading scores as compared to their White peers (Husband, 2012; NCES, 2011; Schott Foundation, 2010; Spellings Report, 2006). Existing research indicates that these disparities in academic performance are a result of inequalities in access to quality education and differences in the treatment of students, which are deeply imbedded in historical patterns of racial, gendered, and class discrimination. However, past studies also indicate that these same students optimize their learning experiences and become high performers when they receive high quality instruction and school enrichments. Thus, this chapter examines the use of Readers Theater as an instructional model that may help to enhance the school achievement of student groups, such as African American males. The chapter documents the challenges that Black males face in schools and proposes performing arts education as a mediating mechanism and reading enhancement tool. Additionally, it includes an in-depth description of Readers Theater and examines several studies on this instructional method and its potential impact on African American males and their reading skills.

Artificial intelligence (AI) refers to a type of algorithms or computerized systems that resemble human mental processes of decision-making. This position paper looks beyond the sensational hyperbole of AI in teaching and learning. Instead, this paper aims to explore the role of AI in educational leadership.

To explore the role of AI in educational leadership, I synthesized the literature that intersects AI, decision-making, and educational leadership from multiple disciplines such as computer science, educational leadership, administrative science, judgment and decision-making and neuroscience. Grounded in the intellectual interrelationships between AI and educational leadership since the 1950s, this paper starts with conceptualizing decision-making, including both individual decision-making and organizational decision-making, as the foundation of educational leadership. Next, I elaborated on the symbiotic role of human-AI decision-making.

With its efficiency in collecting, processing, analyzing data and providing real-time or near real-time results, AI can bring in analytical efficiency to assist educational leaders in making data-driven, evidence-informed decisions. However, AI-assisted data-driven decision-making may run against value-based moral decision-making. Taken together, both leaders' individual decision-making and organizational decision-making are best handled by using a blend of data-driven, evidence-informed decision-making and value-based moral decision-making. AI can function as an extended brain in making data-driven, evidence-informed decisions. The shortcomings of AI-assisted data-driven decision-making can be overcome by human judgment guided by moral values.

The paper concludes with two recommendations for educational leadership practitioners' decision-making and future scholarly inquiry: keeping a watchful eye on biases and minding ethically-compromised decisions.

This paper brings together two fields of educational leadership and AI that have been growing up together since the 1950s and mostly growing apart till the late 2010s. To explore the role of AI in educational leadership, this paper starts with the foundation of leadership—decision-making, both leaders' individual decisions and collective organizational decisions. The paper then synthesizes the literature that intersects AI, decision-making and educational leadership from multiple disciplines to delineate the role of AI in educational leadership.

Title I programs provide extra funding for disadvantaged students by the federal government under the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act and reauthorized under the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Title I continues to be the largest funded component of NCLB. I discuss the NCLB stated goal of closing the achievement gap between poor and minority students and their more advantaged peers. Given the modest level of Title I funding in terms of need, local school districts are only able to provide Title I services to those schools that enroll the highest percentages of disadvantaged students, leaving many disadvantaged students without Title I compensatory services. NCLB calls for funding equity between Title I and non-Title I schools, but this goal is rarely achieved. I also discuss the history of funding under ESEA of 1965 and the 2001 NCLB Act.