Each edition of the IDRA Newsletter strives to provide many different perspectives on the issues in education topics discussed and to define its significance in the state and national dialogue. This issue focuses on Accountability and Civic Engagement and includes: (1) Will States Use ESSA [Elementary and Secondary Education Act] to Undermine…

In this paper we discuss how the products of student work during long-term, interdisciplinary curricular units at King Middle School, a grades 6-8 public school in Portland, Maine, through their aesthetic qualities, transformed people's understanding of what children were capable of. We argue that, to effectively understand student work of this…

Some educators contend that students who engage in activities related to school subjects learn more efficiently and more effectively, and remember what they have learned much longer than students who do not. Service-Learning (S-L) can provide a central focus around which educational change can occur. Moreover, S-L enhances the ideas promoted by…

During the past few years a new trend in day to day schooling has developed, namely independent studies, that involves learning experience between people. This monograph presents the idea that there is a relation between independence in school programs and a desire for "community" (the coming-together of people) which is mutually nourishing.…