This final report culminates the evaluation and technical assistance provided for the U.S. Department of Education's Mathematics and Science Partnership (MSP) Program and its projects since 2005. As part of this support, Abt Associates looked across the portfolio of projects funded by the MSP program to draw lessons on best practices. This…

Educators and policy makers in the United States have relied on tests to measure educational progress for more than 150 years, and have used the results for many purposes. They have tried minimum competency testing; portfolios; multiple-choice items, brief and extended constructed-response items; and more. They have contended with concerns about…

School nurses play a crucial role in injury prevention and initial treatment when injuries occur at school. The role of school nurses includes being knowledgeable about the management of head injuries, including assessment and initial treatment. The school nurse must be familiar with the outcomes of a head injury and know when further evaluation…

This paper reports on a strategy for exploring the life-centric practice of a lecturer in Higher Education. The initiative for this inquiry arose out of the realisation that there did not appear to be positive, heart-lifting stories in a lecturer's current teaching experiences. Using an appreciative eye and supported by a critical friend,…

Designing break-the-mold classrooms--learning spaces that depart dramatically from traditional classrooms--comes with increased risk, especially when the design will be replicated multiple times within a new building. One way to reduce risk is to build a life-size mock-up classroom before making final design decisions. This can help faculty better…

It's becoming common for schools and community colleges to join with leaders of the business and industry community to create public-private partnerships to create new and enhanced opportunities for both parties. By creating a public-private partnership between schools, the local business community, and organizations like Cisco, Florida State…

There is an uneasy relationship between fundraising for academic programs and intercollegiate athletics. This has little to do with individuals and almost everything to do with circumstances in higher education in the United States that have come into play in recent decades. This chapter identifies issues presidents will confront as they seek…

Thinking green is normal for the current generation of high school students, who have always had recycling bins in their classrooms and green themes in their assemblies, lessons, and in many of the television shows they watch. They have been well schooled in environmental messages. It follows that multidisciplinary programs now operate in schools…

The challenging of assessing formal and informal online learning at scale includes various issues. Many universities who are now promoting "Massive Online Open Courses" (MOOC), for instance, focus on relatively informal assessment of participant competence, which is not highly "quality assured". This paper reports best…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were developed to encourage a common focus of instruction and evaluation in the areas of mathematics, reading/language arts, writing, speaking, and listening. As of 2011, all but five states have adopted CCSS for math and English Language Arts (ELA), with another adopting only the standards for ELA. With…

Equipping teachers to use data is a critical piece of the school improvement puzzle. To help early career teachers (ECT) develop data-use acumen, some districts utilize mentoring supports. While research on mentoring in general is well-developed, research on how mentoring can or does support data-informed practice is not. To address this gap, we…

In the United States, we tend to assume that young people should become educated and then go to work, as though the two were entirely separate stages of life. This dichotomy blinds us to the fact that work itself can be a powerful means of education-giving students opportunities to apply academic subject matter to real-world problems, and pushing…

For young people in the United States, whatever their backgrounds, one of the essential purposes of schooling should be to help them develop the knowledge, skills, and competence needed to search for and obtain work that they find at least reasonably satisfying. Our present educational system does precious little to introduce young people to the…

In the United States, we tend to assume that young people should become educated and then go to work, as though the two were entirely separate stages of life. This dichotomy blinds us to the fact that work itself can be a powerful means of education. Indeed, the workplace is where many young people become most engaged in learning high-level skills…

UIL has published a second edition of a collection of case studies of promising literacy programmes that seek to empower women. "Narrowing the Gender Gap: Empowering Women through Literacy Programmes" (originally published in 2013 as "Literacy Programmes with a Focus on Women to Reduce Gender Disparities") responds to the…