Many countries grapple with the tension between commitment to inclusive education reform and the closure of special schools. This tension is particularly problematic for countries, like Australia, that have ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The CRPD is clear that closing special schools is pivotal to…

School-improvement initiatives are implemented with admirable goals, often requiring substantial human and material resources. However, many fail to be sustainable beyond short-term funding cycles or the enthusiasm of local initiators. Typically, implementation and improvement are viewed linearly and as static end-products that fail to consider…

Today's youth suffer through challenges on multiple fronts. Alongside the COVID-19 pandemic and its related social and educational fallout, they've experienced trauma from increasingly frequent school and community violence, homelessness, family separation related to immigration, and sustained child poverty. Exposure to these and other traumas…

The purpose of this systematic literature review of empirical studies was to analyse the results of 20 years of research, related to education reform, to identify factors that support or hinder change efforts. An electronic search identified a total of 160 relevant primary studies published between 2000 and 2020 that were included in the review.…

Inclusive education is a global phenomenon expressed differently in various countries, and different contextual realities support or constrain the process of making education more inclusive. This column reports on an international conference on inclusive education in Johannesburg, South Africa, which provided the opportunity for delegates to share…

Curriculum theorists should develop three classes of propositions: (1) definitional propositions, which involve the curriculum design and curriculum system; (2) normative or descriptive propositions, which involve goals in planning the curriculum and designing an evaluation scheme; and (3) predictive propositions, which involve the correlative…

This book proposes treating teacher evaluation as a set of processes aimed primarily at helping teachers develop professionally. The book opens with a review of current practices and problems in evaluation, then outlines basic theoretical concepts and describes some operational models. The Developmental Teacher Evaluation Kit (DeTEK) is introduced…

Many students in today's high schools choose courses and work experiences in an unplanned, aimless manner that often results in limited career options and undeveloped potential. Innovative educators across the nation have responded by restructuring schools around career pathways, which are integrated, multiyear sequences of career guidance,…

The major challenges for educational reform today are assembling disparate pieces of information to create sustainable systemic change and "scaling up" systemic reform to encompass all schools, all programmatic areas, all levels of schooling and diverse social contexts. Mid-continent Regional Education Laboratory (McREL) has begun to organize its…

The impact on an organization's capacity to respond inevitably to changing needs of the many variables affecting the organization is considered, along with a framework for developing innovations, especially in a time when colleges are facing a period of contraction. A contingency approach to the management of innovation focuses on the influence of…

Elementary schools can play an important role in early identification of and intervention for children with problem behavior by creating the infrastructure to provide preventive, proactive supports for all students. This monograph provides an overview of key features of effective school-wide systems of positive behavior support (PBS) at the…

Beginning with a capsule history of United States education reform efforts and an examination of the American "myth" of the apolitical nature of education, this paper explores the political bases of education policy. Reviewing the literature on educational politics with a particular concern for recent curriculum reform efforts at the state level,…

This book is a compilation of responses and reactions to a position paper by Dr. Joseph Stubbins entitled "The Clinical Model in Rehabilitation and Alternatives." The text of the position paper is presented along with a brief summary of the main points he made in it pertaining to the clinical model and the systems model. Also included in the…

The Framework of Work Based Foundation Skills Project was undertaken to facilitate development of Pennsylvania's new workforce investment system Team PA CareerLink by identifying and developing common definitions of the foundation skills all workers need to function effectively in any workplace. A framework of 19 work-based foundation skills and…

Research on quality assurance (QA) in vocational education and training (VET) in Australia over the past 6 years was reviewed. Three factors responsible for growing interest in QA were identified: close connections with industry sectors that have gained from the introduction of QA measures; the more competitive training market that has been…