As a vital part of the educational enterprise, plans must be made to define the future we want to create for tomorrow's child and to enable educators to deliver on the promise. Planning is just a substitute for good luck. Not relying on luck, educators must identify valid and valuable measurable objectives for education and then enable educators…

The purpose of this paper is to: (1) examine the research base on three types of assessments currently collected in some states and by some institutions of higher education (IHE); and (2) consider the degree to which these assessments can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of programs preparing teachers to work with students with disabilities.…

This publication describes new ways that States redesigning their educator effectiveness systems are measuring growth in student achievement, including value-added models and student learning objectives. The publication concludes with a brief discussion of communicating the results of student growth measures, such as monitoring correlations…

There are ongoing debates as to the merits of mastery and performance (or competitive) approaches to school and student learning. Mastery approaches are focused on factors and processes such as effort, skill development, learning, and understanding. Performance approaches are focused more on competition, demonstrating relative ability, social…