Best practice suggests that curricular decisions be made on the evidence base of the content and the contextual fit of the curriculum to the school setting, and with coaching to help teachers effectively use curricula. Messages from the federal government encourage school administrators and researchers to consider the costs of a program. The…

This project revealed the positive impact of the "SSS for SEL Success" program (SSS-SEL) on students' academics and perceived social/emotional adeptness. SSS-SEL, a new iteration of the "Student Success Skills" (SSS) program, teaches critical social/emotional concepts and strategies and was modified in this study to be…

Responding to student diversity has become a key policy priority in education systems around the world. In addition to international and national institutional policies, major changes are underway in instructional practices and pedagogy in many national contexts. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) has become a key pedagogical approach used in…

As an early Common Core booster, Michael Petrilli had hoped that by now--10 years after most states adopted the standards--the nation's schools would have logged tangible improvements in teaching and learning that resulted in higher student achievement. In this article, Petrilli reviews what Common Core is and discusses the work ahead that is…

Education standards do not flop spectacularly. Their failure gives rise to nothing like the black-and-white films of early aeronautical experiments: no missiles exploding on launch pads or planes tumbling from the sky. But 10 years after 46 of the 50 states adopted the Common Core standards, the lack of evidence that they have improved student…

The 10th anniversary of Common Core's launch offers the opportunity to take stock of the impact these nearly national standards have had on student learning, as well as their future prospects. In this article, Morgan Polikoff shares his view that the standards movement in general, and Common Core in particular, have achieved all they are going to…

The Common Core State Standards, released in 2010, were rapidly adopted by more than 40 states. Champions maintained that these rigorous standards would transform American education, but the initiative went on to encounter a bumpy path. A decade on, what are we to make of this ambitious effort? What kind of impact, if any, has it had on the…

Lead educational agencies (LEDs), school administrators, and teachers do not appear to grasp the influence of curriculum audits on students' academic performance relative to the level of recommendations that are implemented. Failure to comply fully with audit recommendations can have negative implications on a district's financial status and…

The reading attainment of the 3,875 primary 4 Hong Kong primary school students participating in the 2011 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study ranked first among 49 countries and regions surveyed worldwide. Analysis of the association between (a) participating students' reading attainment and (b) responses to questionnaires completed…

Over the past decade, several European countries have implemented policies and programmes leading to the introduction of the concept of "all-day schooling," thus acknowledging the need to guarantee the guard of all children and to enhance equal opportunities of success at school. The Portuguese Ministry of Education created and funded…

This efficacy study was designed to examine the traditional FOSS curriculum (Delta Publishing, Full Option Science System/FOSS, magnetism and electricity, structures of life, and water modules, 2005), and the new ASK/FOSS curriculum (magnetism and electricity, structures of life, and water modules, 2005), a revised version of the original FOSS…

This article reports on an evaluation to interrogate the efficacy of a Scottish Government sponsored initiative to introduce an arts-infused education model to primary (elementary) and secondary (high) schools called Arts Across the Curriculum. Between April 2005 and December 2007 the evaluation team gathered data about this three-year pilot…

A pre- and post-test quasi-experimental design was used to test the impact of a 30-week, theoretically-based social and emotional learning (SEL) curriculum, The RULER Feeling Words Curriculum ("RULER"), on the academic performance and social and emotional competence of 5th and 6th grade students (N = 273) in fifteen classrooms in three schools.…

Improving the ability of disadvantaged students to read and comprehend text is also fundamental to the federal education policy aimed at closing the achievement gap between low- and high-achieving students. Title I of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 calls on educators to close the gap using approaches shown to be effective through…

Two curriculum evaluation projects were conducted in response to requests from practitioners interested in determining the quality of commercially developed reading programs. The 1st project, sponsored by 3 school districts in Texas, focused on 5 1st grade reading programs. The 2nd, conducted at the request of junior high, middle-, and high-school…