This update discusses what states are doing to mitigate the trend of parents keeping their children out of statewide assessments. Over the last few years, the United States has seen growing opposition to statewide assessments, as evidenced in the increasing numbers of parents (or guardians) who are deciding not to have their children participate…

In 2017-18, states and districts began to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the current authorization of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). ESSA continues to call for states to set academic content standards, assess student achievement, identify and support low-performing schools, and improve educator…

Reading Apprenticeship is a research-based professional learning model and instructional framework designed by the Strategic Literacy Initiative (SLI) at WestEd to improve student literacy and learning. Based on understandings of the close relationship between curricular reform and professional development (Heller & Greenleaf, 2007), Reading…

Literacy skills lay the foundation upon which every individual's education rests. When a learner receives the necessary tools to develop strong language and literacy skills, he or she becomes able to achieve personal autonomy and pursue aspirations. Ohio is committed to supporting an education system that prioritizes the language and literacy…

This issue's featured article, "Assessment and Learning: Fields Apart" (Baird, Andrich, Hopfenbeck, and Stobart 2017) raises issues that are of basic importance for the disciplines of assessment and teaching and learning theory. In this commentary, Alex Scharaschkin restricts his remarks to a few areas. He considers the idea of a…

The purpose of this article is to share the insights gleaned from the literature and our on-the-ground realities teaching practitioners to conduct educational research and evaluation. We focus on four areas we have found most important for teaching practitioner-scholars: (a) giving careful attention to andragogy versus pedagogy, (b) engaging the…

Assessment of teaching and learning internationally and within Nigeria formed the crux of the paper. The focus is the basic and secondary education levels. The main objective is to demonstrate that assessment of teaching and learning are core to education delivery. The concept of assessment was analyzed. Cases of assessments in Africa were cited…

Understanding the policy directed education environment in which health education as a subject sits in "The New Zealand Curriculum" (NZC) is akin to attempting a complex jigsaw puzzle without a picture to show how the pieces fit together. This article will provide an overview of the multiple education policies, presented as a…

In this article we discuss a model for assessing general education student learning outcomes related to reducing racial bias in postsecondary students. As many postsecondary institutions do, our institution attempts to address racial bias through our general education curriculum, but it is difficult to assess improvement in this area. We used the…

In a South Carolina middle school, students were performing poorly on the state assessment in reading. Eighth grade students were not passing the Palmetto Assessment of State Standard (PASS) assessment administered each spring. The purpose of this study was to examine whether student performance on the Measure of Academic Progress (MAP) reading…

Many jurisdictions use data about college and career readiness to help stakeholders understand whether students are on track to succeed in college and careers after high school graduation. For example, Hawaii includes the percentage of high school graduates from a particular school who later attend college in school-level feedback reports for…

In the early twentieth century in the United States, Roman Catholic schools grew in number and became increasingly regulated by state departments of education. This led to the increased influence of public school reform movements in Catholic schools. Some Catholic educators questioned these movements, while others embraced them. Educational…

Purpose: Existing studies of school efficiency primarily specify teacher inputs as the number of teachers and perhaps the student-teacher ratio. As a result, there is no direct qualitative recognition of the learning environment. The purpose of this paper is to incorporate the learning environment directly into the assessment of school efficiency.…

Recent education policy analysis has revealed the standardisation of education systems and an intensified focus on learners and learning to meet the requirements of the global economy and neo-liberalism. In this paper we analyse the way that early childhood education in Aotearoa New Zealand has become increasingly entangled with school sector…

The study aims to determine the extent of the implementation of the English Language Teaching 2013 Curriculum in Indonesia on aspects of planning stage, teaching and learning processes, and teaching assessments. It is a cross-sectional survey which uses quantitative and qualitative approaches. The data are gathered from questionnaire, observation,…