Fitness assessment can be an important and useful component of physical education. This article discusses how to avoid the pitfalls that lead to negative student experiences with fitness assessment and presents research-based suggestions for creating a positive experience for all students. A section to help teachers understand how to use fitness…

Curricular reform efforts are underway in many countries, focused on adopting inquiry-based approaches to teaching and learning. Therefore, it is increasingly important to understand what outcomes students attain in inquiry environments. Derived from a literature review, a 23-item, criterion-referenced inventory is presented for theoretically…

Standards-based reform, as codified by the No Child Left Behind Act, relies on the ability of assessments to accurately reflect the learning that takes place in U.S. classrooms. However, this property of assessments--their instructional sensitivity--is rarely, if ever, investigated by test developers, states, or researchers. In this paper, the…

Among the five roles--leader, instructional partner, information specialist, teacher, and, program administrator--identified for the school librarian in "Empowering Learners: Guidelines for School Library Media Programs" (AASL, 2009), the role of teacher is critical for improving student achievement. The school librarian is uniquely positioned in…

The culture of assessment in higher education requires academic librarians to demonstrate the impact of information literacy instruction on student learning. As a result, many librarians seek to gain knowledge about the information literacy assessment approaches available to them. This article identifies three major assessment approaches: (1)…

Although dropout rates in virtual school courses are typically quite high, some virtual programs have very low course dropout and failure rates and better passing rates on key criterion tests (e.g., AP tests) than do traditional school programs. Directors of five successful virtual schools agreed to share their "formulas for success" in…

Student Progress Monitoring (SPM) offers an effective and time-efficient way for teachers and administrators to make informed instructional decisions and quantify students' rate of progress. SPM differs from traditional standardized tests in that it involves administering short tests (typically one to five minutes) frequently, usually one or more…

Effective curriculum is based on a mastery learning model. According to Carroll's mastery learning model, learning rate is partially a function of student "perseverance" or time on task, which is in turn determined by a learner's entering repertoire and the quality of instruction. Although the mastery-learning model looks simple, its execution is…

Chicago's mastery learning program takes into account the complexities of reading and the realities of urban classrooms. Its designers say that if a program does not lead to success, it is not a mastery learning program. (Author/JM)

The first of nine volumes in the SER-LARS (Special Education Resources Location Analysis and Retrieval System) Series presents an overview of the system's diagnostic-prescriptive instructional data bank. Information for the user is provided on resources needed, information generated, and procedures for the model's eight levels: initial referral…

In this update, 49 more goal-based programs are added to the 50 programs described in the directory's initial 1981 edition. The programs are goal-based in that they make use of such concepts as minimum competency testing, mastery learning, and continuous progress curricula, among others. As in the initial edition, each program receives a one-page…

This yearbook, consisting of 18 papers, deals with updating the content of secondary business education programs. The focus of the articles is on trends affecting secondary business education curricula, determining curriculum needs in secondary business education, implementing content changes, and changing secondary business education content to…

This document presents the 1992 research and service agendas for the National Center for Research in Vocational Education (NCRVE). It begins with NCRVE's mission statement. Part 1 contains research project descriptions. It sets forth the six issue areas into which NCRVE's research agenda is divided and then groups the descriptions into these…