This report examines governance in K-12 public education and offers two approaches for altering public-education governance. The document is a product of the National Commission on Governing America's Schools, which is a special research group comprised of school-board members, state and local superintendents, teachers, for-profit education and…

This paper examines the issues that accountability-driven planning has generated for those attempting to retain ownership of their school-improvement process. It outlines five sets of contradictions, broadly relating to assumptions about planning, that become evident from a study of the planning literature: (1) short time-lines and multiple…

This article analyzes education and finance in Texas. It reports that Texas spends less per pupil on education than many other states in the nation--despite a greater than 10 percent increase in state appropriations for education since 1996. There is also high variance in per-pupil expenditures from one district to the next, with some school…

A pilot project demonstrated the remote use of an application designed with hypertext markup language (HTML) as an assessment and discussion support system for 28 students enrolled in a graduate educational research methods course at a midwestern state university. The web page was developed to support classroom learning and assessment by guiding…

This report provides a performance review of a Texas school district. For the review, investigators interviewed district employees, school-board members, students, parents, business leaders, and representatives from community organizations. The review team also held public forums, conducted focus-group sessions and personal interviews, surveyed…

This report provides a performance review of a Texas school district. For the review, investigators interviewed district employees, school-board members, students, parents, business leaders, and representatives from community organizations. The review team also held public forums, conducted focus-group sessions and personal interviews, surveyed…

This resource guide was published as part of the college-wide assessment and evaluation activities at Columbia Basin College (Washington) in 1997. The purpose in producing the document was to meet the need for some guidelines and written information about how to develop an assessment plan, the different ways to assess that plan, and how to use the…

How to implement self-evaluation in classrooms is outlined. The book describes curricula in which students have a strong voice in evaluating, planning, and documenting their work. The chapters are: (1) "Students Evaluate Their Schoolwork"; (2) "Students Evaluate Their Out-of-School Lives"; (3) "Students Evaluate School"; (4) "Looking Back:…

In Wake County (North Carolina), kindergarten teachers assess all their entering students with the locally developed Kindergarten Initial Assessment, which includes: (1) an assessment of personal, social, language and literacy, physical, and mathematics skills; (2) an evaluation of print concepts; (3) a visual motor skill index; (4) the…

These four reports describe Oklahoma's education-reform efforts, which were mandated by the Education Reform and Funding Act of 1990. Each of the volumes offers an annual report of the ongoing changes in education. Volume 1 focuses on state-appropriated funds for education and per-pupil expenditures. It looks at school consolidation, greater…

A common method used by states, school districts, teachers, parents, and students to assess learning is through use of a scoring guide or rubric. Instructors in a teacher education setting describe their use of rubrics with preservice teachers in the expectation that these teacher candidates would eventually be using rubrics themselves and could…

This book reports on one of the largest studies ever undertaken in Great Britain of what primary schools do to improve literacy and what is going on in classrooms where improvements are taking place. The Leverhulme Primary Improvement Project was a 2-year research project funded by the Leverhulme Trust. The book aims to provide insight into what…

This publication is the first in a series of reports that examine policy issues in education. It looks at the four major forms of school choice--charter schools, open enrollment, home schooling, and vouchers--and how they are changing the landscape of public education. School choice is one of the fastest-growing innovations in public education,…

This paper explores the opinions of teachers and principals in Bolu, Turkey, with regard to the organizational health of their schools. It outlines an organizational inventory to determine each school's health profile and examines whether teachers' opinions of the organizational health of their schools are affected by teachers' gender, branch, job…

This guide uses current brain research to show that some traditional instructional and assessment methods may actually work against the brain's natural way of learning. The guide shows how to enhance traditional methods of assessment using techniques derived from recent research on the brain. Practical approaches to assessment are illustrated with…