This article reviews research on changes in teachers' workplace relations in a policy context that increasingly emphasizes accountability. The findings indicate that a greater focus on testing and student performance often leads to less attention to the caring and relational aspects of teachers' work. Prevailing and enduring ideas about teachers'…

In this keynote address, the author shares his reflections on politics, economics, and testing. He focuses on assessment and accountability and begins with some data from large scale written educational testing, "circa 1840". The author argues that people's penchant for accountability and their appetite for standardized testing are, in…

Place- and community-based education--an approach to teaching and learning that starts with the local--addresses two critical gaps in the experience of many children now growing up in the United States: contact with the natural world and contact with community. It offers a way to extend young people's attention beyond the classroom to the world as…

This article examines major trends in testing and accountability reform in the United States over the past decade. The review covers the apex and decline of the national experimentation with a range of alternative assessments and the rise of test-based accountability as a central policy initiative. These trends signify that testing has become a…

This document includes the final data collection and scoring tools created by the "Scoop" project, a five-year project funded through the Center for Evaluation, Standards,and Student Testing (CRESST), to develop an alternative approach for characterizing classroom practice. The goal of the project was to use artifacts and related materials to…

While numerous recent authors have studied the effects of school accountability systems on student test performance and school "gaming" of accountability incentives, there has been little attention paid to substantive changes in instructional policies and practices resulting from school accountability. The lack of research is primarily…

Assessment can be one of the most difficult aspects of teaching. The educational, emotional, and formative ramifications of judging a young person's work can weigh heavily on the mind of a teacher. In spite of the anxiety it poses, knowing how to assess students in order to improve instruction is a core principle of effective teaching. This…

This paper reports on the final phase of a three-part study on the status of instructional supervision within several New York City public schools. In the first parts of the study the researchers found, through extensive use of surveys (questionnaires and interviews), that centralized educational reform had serious consequences for instructional…

What can teachers do in their classrooms to help students prepare for a high-stakes, standardized, multiple-choice reading test without sacrificing what they know to be best practice? Decreasing class sizes or other solutions that require substantial changes in school finance are not usually realistic options. This article outlines five…

Proponents of standards-based reform claim that student achievement testing increases accountability and allows for greater instructional consistency. Performance across schools, boards, provinces, and even countries internationally can be compared and contrasted with the aim of identifying exemplary teaching practices. Teachers can also use…

Changes in the way contemporary organizations conduct business demand a concurrent redesign of teaching and testing methods. Maintaining instructional quality must begin with knowledge of the quality revolution in contemporary organizations in order to meet the demands of these organizations for self-confident, self-directed, self-motivated,…

Optimize action learning and successful evaluation through adopting new views of IQ. IQ as developed here relates to success in life and it is among the most changeable of characteristics. However, IQ as measured in the past is one of the least malleable of factors. Had you rather measure for and teach toward something that is not changeable or…

This selection of readings in the field of educational reform presents 46 articles, mostly from the news media, and 2 cartoons related to improvement of the educational system. It opens with "Network Notes," brief reports and reviews about events and recent publications of interest to those concerned with educational reform. The first…

This paper investigated how the examination of student behavior, seen as techniques and their effects, has participated in the construction of citizenship in compulsory schooling in Finland. Data were gathered from "state educational discourse," including national curricula, governmental committee reports, legislative and regulatory…

In designing the learning process for the comprehensive high school, close attention must be paid to curriculum development, instruction, and assessment. Curriculum theorists have identified definitions of curriculum, forces affecting curriculum adoption, and conceptions of curriculum that provide a framework for a definition of curriculum…