Search

The purpose of this paper is to share a model of a principal preparation program that is socially responsible. The program is collaborative with two departments at the Texas A&M University College of Education and Human Development: Educational Administration and Human Resource Development and Educational Psychology (Bilingual Education). The program is being tested as (a) a four-semester program for 36 credit hours, (b) a year-long residency with an intensive summer residency, (c) a randomized control trial study with the treatment students receiving virtual mentoring and coaching, and (d) an analysis of family-community involvement program and dual language program development by the candidates. How we are evaluating the project is also shared.

The increased demand for online courses correlates to increased workloads for faculty, staff, and leadership. Hiring, staffing, and other logistical matters often trump the emphasis on course quality. This paper introduces a strategic framework for creating and sustaining a successful distance education model. Tarrant County College Connect Campus is the provider of online courses and programs within a larger, urban, two-year public institution. Established as a campus in 2014, TCC Connect Campus reflects an intentional framework to ensure quality. Ten specific strategies for quality assurance in online delivery include: Online Instructor Certification, Peer Developed Courses, E-Faculty Coaching, Faculty Performance Indicators, Supplemental Evaluation Feedback Form, adoption of external standards, data dashboards, campus data team, faculty and leadership repositories, and course readiness checklist. These research-based tenets may be adapted and modified to address the needs of other distance education providers.

This paper interrogates the case for improved and broadened public sustainability reporting by universities, and explores whether and how global performance measures capture the institutional attitudes and activities pertinent to universities' contributions to sustainability. The analysis explores all stand-alone, English language reports produced by universities world-wide since 2007. The analysis focuses primarily on the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) index. The paper finds that those universities which have adopted the GRI share a distinct conceptualisation of their role in society. The GRI framework is helpful in capturing universities' environmental impacts and benefits, but is lacking in relation to universities' human rights and social concerns. The paper identifies value in universities adopting a globally accepted sustainability reporting framework and makes specific suggestions as to how the framework might be better adapted for universities.

In the fall of 2015, Jonathan Howland interviewed about a dozen independent school heads to inquire about novel programs and developments in their schools that, if they take root and flourish, could be "game changing"; about their vision of independent schools 40 years hence, in mid-21st-century America; and about impediments to reaching this vision. Among those interviewed were Emily Jones of The Putney School (Vermont), Andrew Vadnais of South Kent School (Connecticut), Kate Windsor of Miss Porter's School (Connecticut), Jim Scott of Punahou School (Hawai'i), Eric Temple of Lick-Wilmerding High School (California), Mo Copeland of Oregon Episcopal School (Oregon), Peter Hutton of Beaver Country Day (Massachusetts), Mark Salkind of The Urban School of San Francisco (California), Matt Glendinning of Moses Brown School (Rhode Island), Russell Shaw of Georgetown Day School (Washington, DC), and Kim Wargo formerly of The Hockaday School (Texas). In this article, Howland cites responses from these current or recent heads of schools and based on their responses, he concludes that independent schools that thrived in the last century embodied the virtues of self-examination, ambition, and judicious planning. These may no longer be sufficient. New cultural markers will include the capacity to be nimble and adaptable, and to experience innovation and change not as "countercultural" measures or "disruptive" threats but rather as endemic practices in every corner of the campus.

States have adopted a variety of policies to encourage universities to expand research production, with the hope of supporting economic growth and competitiveness. This paper considers whether a state-level initiative succeeded in influencing university-based research outputs among regional public universities. We test whether the Texas Research Incentive Program increased research production at a set of state universities as measured by total research spending, federally-funded research spending, the number of scholarly publications, and the share of publications published in high impact factor journals. Using a novel dataset and difference-in-differences analytic strategy, we found that TRIP adoption was associated with a 19%-25% increase in research expenditures at emerging research universities in Texas relative to a matched set of comparable universities. However, TRIP did not influence federally-funded research expenditures or journal publication outputs. We also show that federally-funded research expenditures influence publication outputs — both in amount and quality — and that number of full-time faculty influences both federal research expenditures and publication outputs. We discuss contributions to the literature on regional public universities, loose coupling, and research production, as well as implications for policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As our environment becomes increasingly urban, the governance of urban regions faces multifaceted challenges. There is growing recognition that studying the governance of urban regions requires looking beyond individual plans and examining networks of plans. Existing work on plan networks focuses on documents, neglecting the agency of the people and governments who create and implement the plans. To help fill this gap, we develop and test an analytical framework for assessing urban governance within a network of plans, focusing on the alignment of plan content, interactions, and the relative efficacy of the plans. We apply this framework in metropolitan Austin, Texas (USA), studying five strategic plans that address the region's built environments, transportation systems, and natural areas over a 20 year-period. The analysis reveals how voluntary regional scenario-planning conducted decades earlier continues to shape city and regional development goals; how alignment between plans on paper can belie poor cross-jurisdictional coordination in practice; and how plans addressing transportation and natural areas are more efficacious for implementation than plans for the built environment. In addition to making plan dynamics visible, the framework thus allows for rigorous, empirical assessment of regional governance through a network of plans. • A framework is proposed to analyze urban-region governance with a network of plans. • The framework is tested with five strategic plans in Austin, Texas (USA). • Evidence is found of a network consisting of documents and agency. • Network-of-plan research benefits from the framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As more Latinx students enroll at Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs), it is important for institutions of higher education to intentionally engage in strategic planning that aligns their mission, values, and goals with their changing environments. In this content analysis, we examined how the strategic plans of 19 public 2-year and 4-year HSIs in Texas described the ways in which they served Latinx students beyond enrollment and graduation rates. We propose three HSI orientations – Latinx-ghosting, Latinx-leaning, and Latinx-serving – to demonstrate how HSIs target efforts and resources to serve Latinx students. Our findings suggest there are misalignments between the goals outlined in some strategic plans and the actual measures and practices provided to achieve these goals. Ultimately, we argue that strategic plans from institutions codified as Latinx-serving have the potential to serve as peer examples and roadmaps for current HSIs and emerging-HSIs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public management scholars have made impressive strides in explaining managerial usage of performance information (PI). Does such PI use matter to performance? If so, what types of use make a difference? To answer these questions, we connect managerial self-reported behavior with objective organizational outcomes in Texas schools. We control for lagged comparative school performance and employ inverse probability weighting to mitigate endogeneity concerns. The results show that managerial use of PI is associated with objective indicators of performance, and that the type of use matters. In particular, school principals' use of PI for strategic planning is positively associated with better high-stakes test scores. The findings suggest that maturity of performance management system can shape the relationship between managerial PI use and organizational performance, thereby contributing to a contingency-based understanding of the relationship between performance management and organizational performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]