This essay is a commentary on Brighouse, Ladd, Loeb and Swift's "Educational Goods: Values, Evidence, and Decision-Making." It discusses the book's conceptualisation of childhood goods, and it comments at length on its place within the larger philosophical enterprise of promoting normatively and evidentially sound decision-making in…

Teaching students to act as citizens significantly enhances preparation for college and career. It is incumbent upon the National Council for the Social Studies to provide guidance to states and local districts to develop social studies standards to achieve this goal. The recommendations presented here focus on the principle that standards…

While Massachusetts has received accolades for its high scores on the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP) and Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests, absolute results from standardized tests tend to correlate strongly with family income and parental education. The Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education…

In "Beyond the Common Core: Examining 20 Years of Literacy Priorities and Their Impact on Struggling Readers," Cassidy et al. (2016) suggest that the emphasis on the Common Core State Standards (CCSS, National Governors Association [NGA] Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers [CCSSO], 2010) has had…

A network of volunteers, the International Union for Conservation of Nature Commission on Education and Communication (CEC), present some reflections on their contributions towards the field of education for sustainability from 1992 to the present. Many CEC members have been thought leaders to this multidimensional field, and advocates for a more…

This article is a commentary of a paper by Derek C. Briggs and Frederick A. Peck, "Using Learning Progressions to Design Vertical Scales That Support Coherent Inferences about Student Growth," which describes an elegant potential framework for at least beginning to address three priorities in large-scale assessment that have not been…

This article presents the authors' rejoinder to the comments of Howard Bloom, Derek Neal, and Mike Seltzer on their article. Their commentary focused foremost on the advantages and disadvantages of using Options A, B, or C in using instrumental variables in multisite trials. Of interest are the quantities one can estimate and test in each case,…

During the affluent noughties it was sometimes said of government that it had "more visions than Mystic Meg and more pilots than British Airways". In 2011, the pilots, the pathfinders, the new initiatives are largely gone--implementation is the name of the game--but the visions remain. The latest one, as it affects adult learners, is in…

Reports on the state of strategic planning for education and training in service industries, manufacturing, retailing, and entertainment organizations. A questionnaire surveyed 200 training managers in organizations of over 5,000 employees headquartered primarily in the Pacific Northwest and revealed that strategic planning is becoming a priority.…

Although competency based education (CBE) offers solutions to some educational problems, it is not a cure-all. Problems with CBE include emphasis on output rather than the instructional process itself, over-reliance on occupational competencies and behavioral objectives, a tendency to lower academic standards, and the difficulty of implementation.…

This article presents the author's response to "Excessive Positivism in Person-Centered Planning," by Steve Holburn and Christine D. Cea. The author begins by complementing Holburn and Cea on their courage to voice concerns that perhaps may not appear to be politically correct or perhaps too bold to express in the context of a journal like…

Divides curriculum development into 10 steps to aid administrators at the local level in planning for whole systems or for single courses. (JW)

A merit pay plan can be successful if it contains unified and agreed upon objectives, integration and expansion of present key tasks, and endorsement and involvement of the entire educational staff. The responsibility of developing appropriate goals rests with the board of education, while the responsibility of documenting voluntary participation…

This paper documents the development of a conceptual framework to ensure that the necessary steps are undertaken for effective policy implementation. These steps include the articulation of policy, the translation of policy into procedures, the operationalizing of those procedures into rules, and then both internal (formative) and external…

This document contains a model for vocational career education and career guidance for grades 1-12, based on a program developed in the Washington County School District (Utah). The model is based upon the premise that major educational and vocational goals have been identified over the years by many state departments of education and local school…