Recent Publications by Elizabeth Useem
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Philadelphia’s Teacher Hiring and School Assignment Practices: Comparisons with Other Districts – Executive Summary
The executive summary to the report compares the way the School District of Philadelphia goes about hiring and placing teachers in schools with the practices of other districts.
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Closing the Teacher Quality Gap in Philadelphia: New Hope and Old Hurdles – Executive Summary
This study of teacher staffing issues in the School District of Philadelphia, the third in a series, outlines the degree to which the district has succeeded in upgrading teachers’ professional credentials, recruiting and retaining them,…
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Reforming Alone: Barriers to Organizational Learning in Urban School Change Initiatives
A review and synthesis of findings from evaluations of nine separate professional development initiatives implemented in urban schools. This article identifies school and district policies and structures that have the unintended effect of depleting or…
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Comprehensive District Reform: Philadelphia’s Grand Experiment
This report from Benchmarks, desribes Philadelphia’s comprehensive school reform initiative beginning in December 2001 after the state takeover of the district. It outlines the implementation of the diverse provider model in which 70 schools identified…
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Once & For All: Placing a Highly Qualified Teacher in Every Philadelphia Classroom
This report examines the current status of teacher quality in the city and what the School District of Philadelphia is now doing to ensure that all classrooms have highly trained, motivated, and knowledgeable teachers ready…
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Philadelphia’s New Teacher Coaches: Reflections on Their First Year
The New Teacher Coaches were a part of a group of initiatives launched by the School District of Philadelphia for the 2003-04 school year designed to retain teachers who were new to the system. This…
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Philadelphia’s Teacher Hiring and School Assignment Practices: Comparisons with Other Districts
This report compares the way the School District of Philadelphia goes about hiring and placing teachers in schools with the practices of other districts. We did this to inform the current debate over these processes.…
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Learning from Philadelphia’s School Reform: What Do the Research Findings Show So Far?
For researchers seeking to examine the effects of the school and district interventions spelled out in the 2002 federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation, there is no better place to look than Philadelphia’s public…
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Supporting New Teachers in the City
In 2002, new teacher retention was a major problem in the Philadelphia school district: less than half of new teachers were staying in the district after three years on the job. Useem and Neild detail…
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The Quest for Quality: Recruiting and Retaining Teachers in Philadelphia
In this second report on teacher quality in Philadelphia, the authors revisit the issues of declining rates of teacher certification, high rates of teacher turnover, elevated attrition rates in high-povery, low-performing schools, and highly centralized…
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The Role of District Leadership in Radical Reform: Philadelphia’s Experience under the State Takeover, 2001-2006
Clearly, leadership is key in the success of any reform, especially one as ambitious and complex as that in Philadelphia. ‘The case of Philadelphia is noteworthy as an examplar of the implementation of paradigm-breaking new…
Publication
Closing the Teacher Quality Gap in Philadelphia: New Hope and Old Hurdles
This study of teacher staffing issues in the School District of Philadelphia, the third in a series, outlines the degree to which the district has succeeded in upgrading teachers’ professional credentials, recruiting and retaining them,…
Publication
Learning from Philadelphia’s School Reform: The Impact of NCLB and State Related Legislation
Many of the most radical interventions spelled out as possible improvement strategies for low performing schools and districts in the federal No Child Left Behind legislation have been tried in the School District of Philadelphia…