The Performance Evaluation Reform Act (PERA) has been the governing legislation for teacher evaluation in Illinois since its inception in 2010. PERA's original purpose was to improve the professional competence of teachers while increasing the academic performance of students. This study explored the perceptions and experiences of a small group of…

Without a doubt, the movement toward corporatized, standardized, and even sanitized education models in K-12 education impacts the way students at the higher education level view teaching and learning. New York City public school teachers have been trained to focus entirely on measurable outcomes. Writing is taught as a well-structured paragraph…

We describe an innovative automated test construction algorithm for building aligned achievement tests. By incorporating the algorithm into the test construction process, along with other test construction procedures for building reliable and unbiased assessments, the result is much more valid tests than result from current test construction…

The quality of the teacher workforce in the United States is of considerable concern to education stakeholders and policymakers. Numerous studies show that student academic success depends in no small part on access to high-quality teachers. Many pundits point to the fact that in the United States, teachers tend not to be drawn from the top of the…

The past year has seen the emergence of a broad consensus on raising the standards for entering the teaching profession. The NEA, AFT, and Council of Chief State School Officers all have said they want higher entry standards. Such an exam would be modeled after other professions and is a potential game changer. If sufficiently rigorous, the exam…

Until recently, states focused on ensuring the presence of a "highly qualified teacher" in every classroom. Under the 2001 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), this title described a teacher holding at least a bachelor's degree and the appropriate state license and…

Graduates of a post-baccalaureate secondary education program working on certification in five core subject fields served as a sample for transcript review to investigate how well the variables of number of hours completed for content major course work, the content major grade point average (GPA), and the age of content major course work predicted…

First introduced in 1965, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) has evolved over time, emphasizing education reform priorities that mirror the changing national education policy conversation. The most recent iteration of ESEA, as amended by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), was enacted in 2001. It emphasized improving outcomes for…

Assessing student performance is one of the most critical aspects of the job of a classroom teacher; however, many teachers in the United States do not feel adequately prepared to assess their students' performance. These feelings of inadequacy are exemplified when placed against the context of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, especially with…

Based on the policies and goals of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA), this study reviews how educators in the state of Alabama have addressed the many critical issues posed by this Presidential directive. Challenges such as certification, competency, quality of instruction, teacher training, and funding are discussed. Several state legislative…

Senate Bill (SB) 2042, authored by Senator Marion Bergeson, was passed to establish a new system for providing teacher preparation within the state of California. The credentialing reforms introduced in SB 2042 follow a tradition described by Irving Hendrik and stake their own claims regarding the locus of control over teacher quality, the role of…

The past eight years have seen an unprecedented level of education policy activity focused on issues of teacher quality. Policies have been developed at federal, state, and institutional levels, and include increased institutional reporting of teacher candidates' test scores, the mandate for Highly Qualified Teachers (HQT) in the No Child Left…

The 1998 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act requires states to report annually to the U.S. Department of Education the number of prospective teachers at each of their teacher training institutions who pass the state's tests for licensure. However, the law left decisions on what licensure tests to require, what to assess on them, and their…