The learning sequence described in this article was developed to provide students with a demonstration of the development of box plots from authentic data as an illustration of the advantages gained from using multiple forms of data representation. The sequence follows an authentic process that starts with a problem to which data representations…

Numeracy in schools is becoming an increasingly important part of mathematics learning and teaching. This is because educators want students to engage with mathematical concepts more deeply, use mathematics to make sense of their environment and make decisions that are based on the analysis of mathematical information. In order to be numerate,…

This comprehensive volume offers a snapshot profile of every public school district in the United States serving 1,500 or more students and provides pertinent evaluative and demographic statistics necessary to evaluate educational programs nationwide. This edition includes profiles on 5,797 school districts in the United States, representing 90%…

Since 1973, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has gathered information about student achievement in mathematics. Results of these periodic assessments, produced in print and web-based formats, provide valuable information to a wide variety of audiences. They inform citizens about the nature of students' comprehension of the…

This lesson is designed as a lab assignment for Advanced Placement (AP) Human Geography students wherein they use the popular Gapminder web site to compare levels of development in countries from different world regions. For this lesson, it is important for the teacher to practice with Gapminder before giving the assignment to students. (Contains…

This toolkit, developed by Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Central in collaboration with York Public Schools in Nebraska, provides a process and tools to help teachers use data from their classroom assessments to evaluate promising practices. The toolkit provides teachers with guidance on how to deliberately apply and study one classroom…

Humans synthesize whenever they see links between ideas they have gleaned from other sources. Human brains operate by seeing patterns and trying to make linkages. As students learn about a topic through creating a text-based presentation, they might have varying conceptual understandings of how they can combine their ideas with the information…

Ensuring safer schools requires establishing good indicators of the current state of school crime and safety across the nation and regularly updating and monitoring these indicators. This is the aim of this report. This report is the thirteenth in a series of annual publications produced jointly by the National Center for Education Statistics…

The "2013 State Preschool Yearbook" is the newest edition of our annual report profiling state-funded prekindergarten programs in the United States. This latest "Yearbook" presents data on state-funded prekindergarten during the 2012-2013 school year as well as documenting a decade of progress since the first…

There are many ways to share a collection of data and students' thinking about that data. Explaining the results of science inquiry is important--working scientists and amateurs both contribute information to the body of scientific knowledge. Students can collect data about an activity that is already happening in a classroom (e.g., the qualities…

Working with evidence is a fundamental part of scientific enquiry. Children should be taught to consider evidence and evaluate it. They should make simple comparisons, comparing what happened with what they expected to happen, and try to explain what happened through drawing on their knowledge and understanding. In this article, the author…

In observation of Earth Day, third-grade students were invited to examine what they contribute to the landfill and learn new ways they could help protect the environment. In this lesson, students collected, evaluated, and displayed data comparing the trash generated by home-lunch versus school-lunch students. Students interpreted their findings…

This study addresses how university teaching as a craft is learnt and developed. More specifically, the analysis examines how beginning university teachers begin to develop and reinforce teaching practices that encourage student learning. A qualitative research approach has been used, looking at two beginning university teachers from different…

The "Condition of College & Career Readiness 2015" is the ACT annual report on the progress of US high school graduates relative to college readiness. This report provides a national snapshot of academic performance among African American students in the 2015 high school graduating class who took the ACT® test and addresses questions…

The purpose of this phenomenographic study was to: (a) gain an understanding of the meaning of inquiry held by beginning science teachers and their instructors in an Alternative Teacher Certification Program (ATCP); and (b) compare science teachers' views of inquiry with what they learned in their ATCP. Participants were four beginning science…