With teacher evaluation a nationwide concern these days, the race is on to determine the best way to track music educators' progress. For politicians and for the public, it boils down to this: Get the lousy teachers out so the kids can score well on standardized tests. An oversimplification, perhaps, but it goes a long way toward explaining why…

Perhaps more than many other industries, today's universities and colleges are beset by dramatically rising costs on every front. One of the areas where overhead can be contained or reduced is in the operation of the chilled water systems that support air conditioning throughout college campuses, specifically the cooling towers. Like many…

Polytechnic staff perspectives are sought on the sustainability and large-scale implementation of design teams (DT), as a means for collaborative curriculum design and teacher professional development in Ghana's polytechnics, months after implementation. Data indicates that teachers still collaborate in DTs for curriculum design and professional…

Peer observation of teaching is seen as a supportive and developmental process for improving the quality of teaching in universities. Evidence is emerging that the process of observing is just as if not more valuable than being observed and given feedback. In this study lecturers completing a Foundations program in university learning and teaching…

The author argues that a Higher Education Bill will be lacking in the future, as promised in the 2011 White Paper on HE; and hence the regulatory framework for English HE will, for the immediate future at least, have to evolve within the law as it is rather than via new legal powers. The essential issue is how to extract the benefits of market…

Many low income, minority schools in California are within 100 points of closing the achievement gap, a prize worth working for no matter how inconvenient, uncomfortable, or risky. In this article, the author describes a better way to motivate educators to try new things that will accelerate student learning and close the achievement gap. The…

School improvement depends upon mediating the cultural conditions of learning as young people journey between their parochial worlds and the public world of cosmopolitan society. Governing bodies have a crucial role in including or diminishing the representation of different cultural traditions and in enabling or frustrating the expression of…

This article presents a novel theoretical framework for the study of educational policy borrowing at the sub-national level. Prior theorizing on educational policy transfer, and on policy "borrowing" in particular, has focused on cross-national processes. In this article the author uses the existing cross-national models of Phillips and…

Regardless of how one might feel about the recent developments in teacher evaluation systems, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and adequate yearly progress (AYP), or student assessments for high-stakes promotion decisions, educators overwhelmingly agree that use of multiple measures is better than reliance on a single measure such as a large-scale,…

Past and contemporary scholars have emphasized the importance of job-embedded, systematic instructional inquiry for educators. A recent review of the literature highlights four key features shared by several well documented inquiry approaches for classroom teachers. Interestingly, another line of research suggests that these key features also…

Changing the culture of a large, diverse high school from a place of teaching to a place of learning requires determination and the commitment of the entire school staff. Documented academic growth for all students and reduced achievement gaps over the last five years have demonstrated that Bloomfield (New Jersey) High School has made this…

This election season, "Forward" was the watch-word of President Barack Obama's campaign. During the election battle, it stood for moving ahead with four more years of his leadership, and for the future-focused thinking the president espoused as a candidate. But what does "forward" mean for President Obama's second term in…

Urban and metropolitan areas face unique challenges in serving the multifaceted needs of their communities, but also have advantages that create some of the world's greatest universities. Three scholars opened the 2017 CUMU [Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities] Annual Conference with "Voices from the Field." Each spoke to…

This book responds to growing recognition by international education professionals, policy makers, and funding partners of the need for qualified teachers and interest in the subject of teacher professional development (also referred to as "teacher behavior change"). The book responds to important questions that are fundamental to…

IES is the primary research, evaluation, and statistics arm of the U.S. Department of Education. Established through the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 (ESRA), the Institute's mission is to expand fundamental knowledge and understanding of education and to provide education leaders and practitioners, parents and students, researchers, and…