Almost nobody, it seems, disputes the importance of effective teachers--including teachers themselves. However, principals actually do none of the things they do when they value something as highly as most people say they value good teachers. By looking at scores on year-end standardized tests by teachers, principals think they have a pretty good…

Higher education in Russia is currently being reformed. A standardized computer-graded test and educational vouchers were introduced to make higher education more accessible, fund it more effectively, and reduce corruption in admissions to public colleges. The voucher project failed and the test faces furious opposition. This paper considers…

The aim of this article is to inform the diagnostic knowledge base for professionals working in the field of language disorders when classic symptoms, characteristics and sequences are not found. The information reveals the risk of diagnosis with a developmental language disorder (DLD) by default when no underlying cause can be readily identified.…

Most growth models implicitly assume that test scores have been vertically scaled. What may not be widely appreciated are the different choices that must be made when creating a vertical score scale. In this paper empirical patterns of growth in student achievement are compared as a function of different approaches to creating a vertical scale.…

A quiet revolution is picking up steam in the nation's private secondary schools, with broad implications for college admissions and for teaching and learning on both sides of the transition from high school to college. About 50 of the nation's leading college-preparatory schools have opted out of the College Board's Advanced Placement (AP)…

Kindergarten has changed radically in the last two decades in ways that few Americans are aware of. Children now spend far more time being taught and tested on literacy and math skills than they do learning through play and exploration, exercising their bodies, and using their imaginations. The implications of these radical changes in early…

School has become a high-stakes environment for K-12 English language learners (ELLs) who are increasingly taught in mainstream classes where they are expected to meet grade-appropriate standards developed for fluent English speakers and where they must demonstrate achievement through standardized tests in English. The mainstreaming of ELLs, along…

With most gifted students being educated in a mainstream model of education, the prevailing myth that the regular classroom teacher can "go it alone" and the companion myth that the teacher can provide for the education of gifted students through differentiation are alive and well. In reality, the regular classroom teacher is too often concerned…

Early years teachers are in need of efficient measures to identify young students who are not making adequate progress in learning to read. The Wheldall Assessment of Reading Lists (WARL) has been developed to meet this need. The test, a curriculum-based measure of word identification fluency, consists of a series of parallel lists of frequently…

In an era when so much emphasis is being placed on the high-stakes standardized testing of fundamental subjects such as reading, writing, and math, it makes sense to demonstrate the role technology educators play in developing such fundamental knowledge and skills in youth. While the author believes that technology education contributes to the…

Objectives: To demonstrate that high IQ adults diagnosed with ADHD suffer from executive function (EF) impairments that: a) can be identified with a combination of standardized measures and self-report data; and b) occur more commonly in this group than in the general population. Method: 157 ADHD adults with IQ greater than or equal to 120 were…

Because classroom size reduction (CSR) and standards based testing were implemented at the same time in California during the mid-1990s, it is difficult to isolate the effects of classroom size on outcomes from the effects of curriculum changes. As a result, the main comparison in this paper is very specific--the effect of reduced sized…

This article demonstrates, through stories of Ohanian's teaching, journalism experience, and analysis of testing items and outcomes, that we have every right and obligation to challenge institutionalized norms that shape today's views of assessment practices.

Have you ever had a teacher say, "I'd love to bring my classes to the library more often, but we just don't have enough time because we have to prepare for our state standardized tests?" This response stems from a misconception about the role of library media centers and library media specialists. In some school environments, the library media…

The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between 8th grade student data and the level of student success at the end of the ninth grade year. The theoretical framework for this study was based on the Meleis (1986) Transition Theory and it was a mixed methodology research study that employed both qualitative and quantitative…