The need for new forms of schooling with a learner-centered focus underlies the urgency to retool and enhance the systems that are used to leverage improvements in teaching and learning. In order to transform education at this most fundamental level, policy leaders and educators must focus on crafting integrated systems for defining and developing…

In this article, the authors found that the economic circumstances of military families are good, certainly much improved compared with even a decade ago. The military context is nonetheless challenging, with long hours, dangerous work, frequent transfers, and stressful absences during deployment. Service members receive relatively high pay and…

According to Chadwell (2009), South Carolina leads the nation in single-gender classrooms as a means to offer parents school choice. South Carolina teachers who recognize and know the gender differences between girls and boys can ensure that students reach their full potential as it relates to education. The concern is that there are a number of…

Increasing demands for design rigor and an emphasis on evidence-based practice on a national level indicated a need for further guidance related to successful implementation of randomized studies in education. Rigorous and meaningful experimental research and its conclusions help establish a valid theoretical and evidence base for educational…

Federal and state guidelines for school reform dominate the landscape of public education. Florida and its school districts, as a Race to the Top state, are in the process of fully implementing a value-added model of teacher evaluation. Effective school leaders are calling upon the theoretical framework of transformational, visionary and…

Tennessee has undertaken several wide-ranging reforms aimed at educator practice and effectiveness over the past several years, including the launch of a new teacher evaluation system, modification of teacher tenure policy, and initial implementation of Common Core State Standards. This report from the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE)…

High school career academies are a time-tested model for improving academic outcomes and preparing students for both college and careers. Career academies (1) are smaller learning communities taught by a team of interdisciplinary teachers, (2) provide a rigorous academic curriculum based on a career theme that demonstrates how knowledge is used…

The Office of Management and Budget requested that the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) oversee an independent impact evaluation of the federal Student Mentoring Program, and in 2005 IES contracted with Abt Associates and its team of subcontractors (Branch Associates, Moore and Associates, and the Center for Resource Management) to conduct…

As the national education policy community prepares for the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), revamping the school improvement approach leveraged by accountability systems has risen to the top of the agenda. There is an emerging consensus that the school improvement process should be systemic, led by states and…

Using interviews and 10 weeks of consecutive lesson plans with supporting documentation, the author analyzes four first-year teachers' assigned in-class and out-of-class reading assignments and their choices and uses of reading strategies they learned in their preservice program. (Contains 2 tables.)

This commentary describes a national bullying prevention effort, called Stop Bullying Now!, which aims to increase awareness of the problem of bullying and related research findings, and disseminate evidence-based approaches to prevention. Drawing on the special issue's main theme of the social context of bullying, the author describes the process…

A growing body of empirical evidence shows that some financial aid programs increase college enrollment. Puzzlingly, there is little compelling evidence that Pell Grants and Stafford Loans, the primary federal student aid programs, are effective in achieving this goal. In this paper, we provide an in-depth review of this evidence, which taken as a…

The Benjamin Gilman International Scholarship Program, founded in 2000 as a means to fund study abroad for low-income students, has become the largest federally funded scholarship program for study abroad at the undergraduate level, with more than 2,300 recipients in academic year (AY) 2010-2011. Interviews with former Congressman Benjamin Gilman,…

Across the nation, 48% of schools have failed to meet No Child Left Behind's testing targets (Center of Education Policy, 2011). In 2011, more schools had not made Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) than in any previous year, according to stateby-state data for the 2011 school year. Out of a total of 980 schools 461, or 47%, did not make AYP in…

The Department of Education (Department) is required to use negotiated rulemaking to develop proposed regulations for programs authorized under Title IV of the Higher Education Act of 1965, as amended (HEA). Under negotiated rulemaking, the Department works to develop the proposed regulations in collaboration with representatives of the parties…