To maintain their commitment to a site, teachers need truly meaningful work. Teacher leadership drives the work of the Writing Project. The narratives in this collection, written by three veteran teacher-consultants, demonstrate many ways in which teacher leadership builds the capacity of any National Writing Project (NWP) site to do its work.…

Australia appears to be in the grip of a "literacy crisis" in workplaces. Media reports and industry/skills organisations are decrying the low literacy and numeracy levels of workers and the negative effects these have on productivity. As a consequence, the Australian government has increased funding for workplace literacy and numeracy…

This report was written to shine a spotlight on the under-reported plight of America's nonprofit organizations and to make recommendations for how the nation can respond. In the wake of the economic downturn, hospitals, nursing homes, nursery schools, senior centers, soup kitchens, and other nonprofit organizations have been hit by a triple…

For decades, when elected officials, researchers, educators, and parents have wanted a clear-eyed measure of what students know in a range of subjects, they have turned to an authoritative source: the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Now the country stands poised to enter a new testing era. All but two states have agreed to work…

Five years ago, the editor of "Exceptional Parent" Magazine requested the author to provide an account of a day in the life of the National Children's Study, an ambitious study by the federal government that aims to find out how the environment affects child health and development. Planning and implementation of the National Children's Study has…

The "Tiwest" Night Stalk is a national program that was developed originally as a National Science Week activity. It is held between 1 September and 16 October each year.

This article reports on a school's effort to open Advanced Placement (AP) to all by challenging its students to take the leap into AP courses. Samuel W. Wolfson High School, on the south side of Jacksonville, Florida, is one of 27 schools in five cities across the country that chose to participate in a College Board initiative called EXCELerator.…

This paper describes a framework developed by the Financial Literacy and Education Commission (FLEC) to provide the foundation for an overarching financial literacy strategy. This framework establishes concrete goals that the non-profit, government, and private sectors can and should work together to increase financial literacy and improve…

America's present economic unraveling has attracted intense interest among policy makers and the public. A far greater number of analysts that predicted the crisis now seem to know a path out of it. To be sure, the new president does not lack for advice on how to fix the situation. While the financial and regulatory underpinnings of the current…

Using research conducted by the federal government's own finance department, social policy groups released the report, "Paying for Canada: Perspectives on Public Finance and National Programs." It showed that deliberate government policy to reduce taxation levels for some of the most economically advantaged groups in Canada had resulted…

The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) is one of the largest food and nutrition assistance programs in the United States, feeding millions of children every day. School meal providers face the task of serving nutritious and appealing school lunches, including free and reduced-price lunches for low-income students, and doing so under budget…

The National Writing Project has drawn a steady and loyal following over more than three decades among teachers seeking to refine their own skills, reflect on their practice, and learn strategies for teaching their young scribes. After years of fending off critics and proposed budget cuts, the long-standing national program is moving beyond the…

The Common Core of Standards project has strong national support, but it will not succeed if it doesn't involve teachers in grassroots development activities. The initiative should involve local consortia of schools in working with the new standards, assessments, and support tools. Local teachers would design teaching units and then share these…

The purpose of this paper is to discuss both the status of the PhD in South Africa and the feasibility of the country's aspiration to increase by fivefold the production of PhDs by 2025. Based on the first empirical studies on doctoral education in South Africa, it argues that in order to move towards this target, an expanded and coordinated…

This documentation is for the revised file (Version 1b) of the National Center for Education Statistics' (NCES) Common Core of Data (CCD) National Public Education Financial Survey (NPEFS) for school year 2008-2009, fiscal year 2009 (FY 09). It contains a brief description of the data collection along with information required to understand and…