With decreasing enrollment, decreasing funding for public school education, changes in family and societal needs, and the mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act, policymakers and school leaders are wrestling with reforms to the school calendar and instructional time spent in the classroom, with the goal of increasing student achievement.…

To give states the information they need to sustain hard-fought education reform effectively, Achieve conducted research on state education reforms that have been sustained successfully for over a decade or more. Funded by the GE Foundation, Achieve hopes this work will help other state leaders, wherever they may be on their road to reform,…

To give states the information they need to sustain hard-fought education reform policy changes effectively, Achieve conducted research on state education reforms that have been sustained successfully for over a decade or more. Funded by the GE Foundation, Achieve hopes this work will help other state leaders, wherever they may be on their road to…

This guide will provide the reader with the tools needed to plan a successful Cree language experience in the classroom. As a teacher, you will choose appropriate activities with your students from the Sample Teaching and Learning Activities. The activities and assessment strategies are samples you can add to and adapt to fit your classroom…

The literature and research on online learning has grown significantly in the past decade. Many studies have been published that examine the extent, nature, policies, learning outcomes, and other issues associated with online instruction. Much of this literature focuses specifically on postsecondary education. With almost 4 million students or 22…

In Spring 2007, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation awarded funds to the Philadelphia Youth Network (PYN) to undertake an analysis of Career and Technical Education (CTE) in Philadelphia, and to make recommendations on how CTE and other forms of career-connected education could better align with Philadelphia standards for college and career…

This document reports on a research project held in 2005, which looked to see how performance indicators related to area needs. It shows the results of research across four Learning and Skills Council (LSC) areas, with contributions also from national stakeholders and other witnesses. Findings include: (1) Performance indicators are regarded as…

In accordance with the European processes of integrated and homogeneous education, the paper presents the essential viewpoints and questions covering the establishment and development of "distance learning" (DL) in Republic of Croatia. It starts from the advantages of distance learning versus traditional education taking into account…

In this paper, the authors critically examined the problems of admission into Nigeria Universities; and expressed the view that about seventy percent of Nigerians are not aware of the essence of the present system of education, which is geared towards producing individuals with adequate knowledge and skills needed for self-reliance or employment…

Every year, New Zealand assesses students' learning progress through the National Educational Monitoring Project (NEMP). NEMP is a national, formative evaluation effort that provides New Zealand educators with an accurate picture of students' education progress at Year 4 and Year 8, which are roughly comparable to grades 3 and 7 in the United…

The collection of which this article is a part is entitled "Functions of Assessment in Teacher Education." The other papers in this set draw our attention to multiple functions of assessment including peer evaluation, promoting reflection, use of technology in demonstrating teacher competence, and validating new national standards of excellence…

The recent increase in the use of constructed-response items in educational assessment and the dissatisfaction with the nature of the decision that the judges must make using traditional standard-setting methods created a need to develop new and effective standard-setting procedures for tests that include both multiple-choice and…

Reporting within the administration responsible for primary and secondary schools in the Kirov region from the early 1930s to 1941 followed a script of escalating negativity in which the higher the chain of command, the more negative the assessment. School directors wrote positive quarterly and annual evaluations. District and municipal…

Some of the challenges that test publishers face in constructing educational assessments that meet high technical quality as prescribed in the "Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing" (AERA, APA, NCME, 1999) are examined. Federal educational initiatives are used to illustrate demands on technical quality that challenge the efforts of…

Education and assessment in Swedish schools have been affected by several reforms during the last two decades. The educational system has moved from centralization to decentralization and a goal-oriented approach has been introduced on all educational levels. This paper provides an historical overview of the Swedish educational system, educational…