In 2008, the Council for Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the National Governors Association started discussing the possibility of moving away from separate state standards. State education leaders were concerned that existing state standards weren't rigorous enough. So, in 2009, 48 states signed on to develop the Common Core State…

Following the dismissal of a Canadian professor over disputed grading practices, Hill produced his triangle model of competing interests of academics, administrators and students. In the UK, academic freedom in relation to grading is increasingly constrained reflecting more assertive institutional management supervising over-burdened academic…

The process of program evaluation was utilized to evaluate the education program, provide information to make decisions on its ability to comply with mandates from the state education department, and develop or improve the program to meet the goals of the new initiative to meet the needs of English language learners. The program evaluation process…

Professional school counselors are educational leaders with training and expertise to address the mental health concerns of students. Unfortunately, work conditions at some schools can create barriers to the delivery of effective mental health services. This article presents a case of one rural, diverse high school that transformed its school…

The intersection of No Child Left Behind (2002) and the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (2004) made it necessary for educators to examine achievement trends within their schools and implement a Response to Intervention (RTI) program. This study examines the achievement trends in one school district since its…

The Improving Teacher Quality (ITQ) program released Requests for Proposals in March for the next round of teacher professional development projects. The first RFP, Addressing the Achievement Gap in Middle Schools (AAGMIS), is for stand-alone grants similar to the 2008 projects that target the achievement gap in elementary schools. The second RFP,…

Whether a school library program is the picture of good health in a state that mandates a professionally staffed library media center in every building or is suffering in a low-wealth district that is facing drastic cuts, the recently launched toolkits by the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) are stocked with useful strategies and…

This is the first of three volumes that constitute the final evaluation report of Project STAR (State Technical Assistance Resources), an undertaking of the Maryland State Department of Education designed to help 36 elementary schools improve their reading programs. This volume is essentially descriptive and is divided into seven parts. The first…

This article is third in a series written to address questions regarding the need for more empirical research in the field of human performance technology (HPT) and the need to determine the future direction of HPT research. The call for more empirical research has been published in journals such as "Performance Improvement Quarterly" and…

Among Canadian teacher unions, discussions of class size are increasingly being informed by the importance of considering the diversity of student needs within the classroom (often referred to as class composition). For teachers, both class size and diversity matter. Teachers consistently adapt their teaching to address the individual needs of the…

The International Society for Performance Improvement has always been divided by two often-conflicting views of what its purpose or mission really is. Is it primarily technology focused (focusing on the development and promotion of the field) or member focused (focusing on members' interests and their professional development)? This difference in…

Previous work on policy implementation has often suggested that schools leave their "thumbprints" on policies received from above. During the implementation of Primary Class Size Reduction (PCS) Initiative in Ontario, Canada, however, school principals spoke with remarkable uniformity about the ways PCS affected their work. This article…

This paper presents eight practical guidelines that teachers can use to make core instruction more systematic and explicit for students with or at-risk for mathematics disabilities. In the paper, we use the notion of explicit and systematic instruction as a foundation for intensifying core math instruction. Explicit and systematic core instruction…

Sanger Unified School District in California's Central Valley had been named one of the worst 98 school districts in California. It was not only one of the worst-performing districts in a state with 1,042 districts, but it also had been flagged as one of the first to be named a program improvement district under No Child Left Behind. In this…

The Taiwan Government launched the Hand-in-Hand After-School Care Program in 2006 with several goals: In addition to providing disadvantaged students with supplemental learning opportunities, this highly ambitious government program hopes to provide increased employment opportunities for substitute teachers and low-income college students, and…