Congress has the opportunity to move forward on education reform by reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or ESEA, to ensure all children achieve their greatest potential. Unfortunately, it has yet to find the will to do so, to the detriment of American students and schools. ESEA is the largest and most significant federal…

Raising academic standards and eliminating achievement gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students are America's prime national educational goals. Current federal and state policies, however, largely ignore the fact that the childhood poverty rate in the United States is 21%, the highest in the industrialized world, and that poverty…

Designed for use by classroom teachers and administrators to guide the development of local instructional programs, this guide prescribes the minimum content for public school instruments in K-12 social studies in the state of Alabama. The emphasis of the curriculum is on history and geography instruction, and, within this context, this document…

CIVITAS is a curriculum framework that sets forth a set of national goals to be achieved in a civic education curriculum, primarily for K-12 public and private schools. It is a framework that proposes to specify the knowledge and skills needed by citizens to perform their roles in U.S. democracy. There are two major sections in the framework. It…

This document is an assessment of a performance-based education project that involved a United States history course, offered at a community college. Thirty-two student performance objectives are outlined and lesson plans designed to achieve each objective are presented. Each lesson plan consists of an instructional topic, prerequisites, interest…

Inspired by America 2000, the educational reform initiative proposed by President George Bush, these materials describe a way of rethinking the place of geography in the curriculum. It is proposed that both natural geography and social geography be taught, and that both should be taught in science and social studies classes. Activities to be used…

Focusing on the school district's written expectations for students, this document examines curriculum improvement in four sections, each accompanied by a list of related references. The first section explores the organizational and substantive planning needed to structure any curriculum improvement project effectively and includes information on…

To identify school-level policies and practices and to see if they reinforced mastery and performance goals for students, interviews were conducted with five principals in schools participating in a collaborative effort to move selected classrooms toward a focus on mastery and learning. Interviews were designed to help understand how principals'…

This paper addresses the lack of a clear definition in the educational profession of such key terms as philosophies, goals, and objectives. Accordingly, a clear rationale and definition is proposed for each of these terms, along with examples illustrating their appropriate use. An educational philosophy is defined as a statement of motivating…

Non-traditional adult students at West Los Angeles Community College (WLACC) who already had bachelor's or higher degrees were surveyed to ascertain why they had returned to college, why particularly to the community college, and what they expected to get from it. Questionnaires were mailed to 120 students who had completed the fall 1977 semester;…

Before teachers can decide how to teach writing to nonstandard dialect speakers, they should determine whether college students can in fact learn to command a second dialect (in this case, Standard English), as well as the most effective way to provide access to command of Standard English while educating the public about the values of nonstandard…

Social theory defines "ritualism" as the communal act of accepting the legitimate means to achieve while rejecting the goals. The innovative-school community accepts the goals; however, the legitimate means are rejected. Ninety-three teachers were surveyed in a high-performing high school and a low-performing high school to determine the…

Due to their more diverse populations, urban colleges have different concerns than suburban and rural colleges, and they must provide programs and services specific to those concerns. The question arises as to whether urban college effectiveness can be measured with traditional indicators. The declining test scores in American public schools have…

It is argued that education for learners of all ages provides new opportunities for higher education in the 1980s. Twenty organizing principles, based on theory and practice, are offered as guidelines for building quality programs. (JSR)

Presents results of a survey of undergraduate physics students which was conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in order to ascertain the students' career goals, perceptions of the job market in physics, and reasons for pursuing a degree in physics. (HM)