Charter schools have become a leading alternative to traditional public education, where children of color have historically experienced low academic performance and dismal results on state-mandated testing. Whether these institutions are, in fact, the answer to what ails education is a matter of debate. Those who support charter schools point to…

In May 2006, Project Forum published a document entitled "Standards-Based IEPs: Implementation in Selected States" based on staff interviews in 18 states about their use of standards-based individualized education programs (IEPs). The definition of a standards-based IEP as presented in that document is: "a process and document that…

In 2002 the Council of the Great City Schools and its members set out to develop performance measures that could be used to improve business operations in urban public school districts. The Council launched the Performance Measurement and Benchmarking Project to achieve these objectives. The purposes of the project were to: (1) Establish a common…

A statewide survey of the infrastructure of teacher education program assessment systems in North Carolina, which include electronic portfolios as a component in the assessment system, measured their ability to meet current and anticipated future data demands for state approval and national accreditation. Almost two-thirds of the 46 teacher…

Teacher education has been undergoing significant transformations worldwide in recent decades, and China has made continuous efforts in its quest for world-class teachers. This paper aims at a comprehensive investigation of the complex policy process in China's national initiatives to nurture a world-class teaching force, with qualitative findings…

The government of Ghana has designed various initiatives to achieve the Millennium Development Goals on education and the Education for All goals. Despite these initiatives, student outcomes continue to be poorer than desired. Although access to education has improved, student dropout remains a problem and student scores on achievement tests…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to describe middle level prepared teachers' perceptions of their practices after completing an Ohio Middle Childhood: Grades 4-9 teacher education program. Using the National Middle School Association/National Council of Accreditation of Teacher Education Initial Level Teacher Preparation Standards (2001)…

When General Certificates of Secondary Education (GCSEs) were introduced in the late 1980s, coursework was included as a requirement in many subjects. Coursework was intended to help best represent students' attainments, but concerns about various issues (e.g., tasks becoming formulaic, authenticity of student work, workload) led to a review and…

Over two decades, national assessments in Ghana have revealed generally poor performances across curriculum-based tests for primary school (Grades 1-6). Various reform agendas have been applied to the education system, sometimes with isolated success, but the overall performances remained stable and low. Surveying teacher mentors in schools…

This article discusses 1:1 learning initiatives in Europe in the context of a mapping framework of ICT-enabled innovation for learning. The aim of the framework, visualised as a spider's web, is two-fold: (i) to provide a further understanding of the nature of ICT-enabled innovation for learning; and (ii) to depict the impact of existing and…

Evidence from recent research suggests that in the UK the public perception of errors in national examinations is that they are simply mistakes; events that are preventable. This perception predominates over the more sophisticated technical view that errors arise from many sources and create an inevitable variability in assessment outcomes. The…

This study investigated elementary teachers' observations of how a representative sample of achieving, average and struggling readers adapted the use of best practice comprehension strategies taught in the classroom as well as during instructional level guided reading time. A researcher-constructed strategy checklist was the instrument teachers…

The purpose of this quantitative descriptive study was to determine whether significant differences existed in the perceptions of elementary school teachers regarding the presence of the 5 dimensions of professional learning communities (PLCs) in Title I schools scoring above versus Title I schools scoring below the 55th percentile on state…

Results from the 2013 NAEP assessments show fourth-and eighth-graders making progress in mathematics and reading. Nationally representative samples of more than 376,000 fourth-graders and 341,000 eighth-graders were assessed in either mathematics or reading in 2013. Results are reported for public and private school students in the nation, and for…

In 2012 the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Government introduced a number of reforms to the higher education system in England. The main change was to abolish direct state subsidies for the teaching of most subjects, and replace them with a state-subsidised tuition fee of up to $9,000 (US $13,700). A number of other changes were also made, all with…