Academic expectations are often antecedents for various types of inappropriate classroom behavior for students with challenging behavior. Effective interventions for managing these behaviors must involve techniques that combat academic refusal. Addressing the underlying issues of resistance or refusal to perform academically in school using…

In this paper we examine how failing to make adequate yearly progress under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), and the accountability pressure that ensues, affects various non-achievement student behaviors. Using administrative data from North Carolina and leveraging a discontinuity in the determination of school failure, we examine the causal impact of…

In the last several years a good deal of public discourse was devoted to describing the effects that more than two decades of education reforms, the last iteration of which was known as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), has had on teaching and learning. It is widely argued that coupling teacher evaluations with students' test scores, enforced…

For decades, the United States has struggled to make good on its commitment to prepare all its young people, not just some, for the opportunities and responsibilities that await them after high school. The education system has worked to define what kids need to know and be able to do to maximize their options. In this article, the authors discuss…

With the advent of No Child Left Behind (2002), the academic expectations of students with disabilities have changed. Students with disabilities are now held to the same academic standards as their peers without disabilities. Furthermore, the 2004 provisions in the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act state that students with…

We have two goals for this article: to question the efficacy of evidence-based practice as the foundation of reading education policy and to propose practice-based evidence as a viable, more socially just alternative. In order to reach these goals, we describe the limits of reading policies of the last half century and argue for the possibilities…

Many people have worried about possible adverse effects of high-stakes testing on socioemotional outcomes. This article uses a difference-in-differences approach to investigate the effects of the introduction of high-stakes testing via the No Child Left Behind Act on socioemotional outcomes. Data are from the Early Childhood Longitudinal…

This article forecasts potential legal problems emerging from the use of new teacher evaluation systems in the states. This research was a policy analysis that combined three types of data to forecast the states and the legal challenges they might encounter: state policy data, selected case law, and problems from the literature of teacher…

How important is it that every student in a school is excited about learning? Should a student be allowed to use all his/her strengths in learning? Do you know someone who wasn't a particularly good student but has been very successful in life? What these seemingly unrelated questions have in common is an appreciation for the range of talents that…

Spatial and creative abilities are important for innovations in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, but talents are rarely developed from these abilities by schools, including among gifted children and adolescents who have a high potential to become STEM innovators. This article provides an overview of each ability and makes…

Henry A. Giroux claims this to be the "worst of times" for US public education. Not alone in this judgment, numerous other scholars stand in agreement with him. These thinkers view the current corporate/accountability/testing movement, with its iron grip on public school policies, as disfiguring and disparaging the US system of public…

Those who work in second- and foreign-language testing often find Koretz's concern for validity inferences under high-stakes (VIHS) conditions both welcome and familiar. While the focus of the article is more narrowly on the potential for two instructional responses to test-based accountability, "reallocation" and "coaching,"…

The 2004-05 school year didn't start off well for the Sanger Unified School District. The district, located east of Fresno, had entered its first year of "program improvement"--a gentler way of saying that Sanger was among the 98 lowest-performing districts in the state based on success criteria in the No Child Left Behind law. The…

The "Brown v. Board of Education" (1954) Supreme Court decision ruled that segregated schools were unequal and unconstitutional. Since Brown's ruling, scholars have questioned whether African American children have benefitted from school desegregation and subsequent school reform initiatives. In spite of several post-Brown school reform…

Debate is occurring about which result interpretation aides focused on examining the experimental effect should be used in single-subject experimental research. In this study, we examined seven nonoverlap methods and compared results using each method to judgments of two visual analysts. The data sources for the present study were 36 studies…