Does the current drive to incorporate social and emotional learning (SEL) into the K-12 curriculum represent a positive reform that will lead schools to educate the "whole student" and ultimately boost young people's academic success? Or is it a distracting fad that comes with high opportunity costs? Common sense and considerable…

Reviews of the effects of noise on performance carried out in the 1980s suggested that results depended on the type of noise, nature of the task, and characteristics of the person performing in noise. This general view has been confirmed in the recent meta-analysis and synthesis by Szalma and Hancock (2011). There are, however, some notable…

A case study of a child not developmentally ready to handle the linguistic demands of a second language in an academic setting is presented as representative of a subgroup of students. It is suggested that new paradigms for researching suitability of early French immersion for all students are needed. (21 references) (Author/MSE)

Extra-year school readiness programs, which serve as "developmental kindergartens" or "junior first grades," are well-intentioned transition programs between kindergarten and first grade that are intended to serve children judged to be at risk for early school failure. Despite their good intentions, these programs are…

Since current instructional, environmental, medical, and neuropsychological interventions do not yield predictable benefits for learning disabled children, there is a need for naturalistic research on the prevention and correction of learning disabilities and learner differences. School personnel should focus on program development, evaluation,…

Programs implementing the Regular Education Initiative (REI) are criticized for their relatively simplistic approaches to the instructional problems created by learner diversity. Such programs as "Success for All" and teacher consultation programs do not adequately consider what happens to those students and teachers who do not succeed under the…

Reflects on previous articles in the same journal on preparation of special education teachers. Discusses the need for special educators to focus their efforts more on teaching the teachers, rather than on system change. Also addresses the challenge of detailing the differences and similarities in students, tasks, and instruction that are relevant…

Evidence from followup studies of teacher education graduates indicates that teachers do not value certain major components of their teacher education programs and do not really remember or know what their teacher education programs attempted to teach them. While educational experts cite the extensiveness and comprehensiveness of teacher education…

A discussion of student and program assessment in the context of Chinese language instruction looks at theory and methods of assessment, and proposes that norm-referenced language proficiency testing is inadequate to evaluate student achievement and program effectiveness. It is further proposed that criterion-referenced tests are more appropriate…