The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) assesses the extent to which 15-year-old students near the end of their compulsory education have acquired the knowledge and skills essential for full participation in modern societies. The assessment does not just ascertain whether students can reproduce knowledge; it also examines…

Teaching foreign languages has become a major goal for many education systems around the world. In today's increasingly interconnected world, speaking multiple languages improves employability, fosters respect for people from other cultures, and gives young people direct access to content that would otherwise be inaccessible, including literature,…

Across Europe we can observe the reinforcement of monolingual education policies, despite increasing multilingualism. Recent research has shown that the emphasis is on language proficiency in the socially dominant language. This is viewed as the key to educational success. The use of other languages or linguistic repertoires is not valued in…

This paper has two aims: to introduce readers to Bernstein's concept of languages of description, interpreted through the lens of ethnography; and to demonstrate the value of this approach to theory-making by showing how a qualitative study conducted on these principles led to new explanations for gender differences in literacy attainment that can…

"It's only okay to call a Black person an idiot"--this statement marks the launch point for a personal essay about one family's negotiation of an act of racism that occurs in an afterschool conversation among 6-year-olds. A work of educational criticism, the essay takes on the school's passive refusal to acknowledge race and racism,…

While much of the work in language testing is concerned with constructing quality tests in order to measure language knowledge in reliable and valid ways, there has been a significant movement in language testing research that examines tests in the context of their use in education and society. This line of research exits from the notion that…

Teachers are the most important school resource. In every country, teachers' salaries and training represent the greatest share of expenditure on education; and this investment in teachers can have significant returns. Research shows that being taught by the best teachers can make a real difference in the learning and life outcomes of otherwise…

Using Seattle Public Schools (SPS) as a model, this Alliance for Excellent Education report shows how high-quality curriculum and innovative school designs that support the use of students' home languages, as well as English, produce better outcomes for English language learners (ELLs). The report also shows how SPS develops educators who value…

Since 2011, Grantmakers for Education has offered a series of investigative programs designed to examine the role grantmakers can play in creating more equitable systems of education. GFE's programming included place-based programs in El Paso, Texas, Newark, New Jersey, Oakland, California, and Minneapolis, Minnesota. During this time, Grantmakers…

In 1999, the primary curriculum was published in Ireland, with emphases on "breadth and balance", recognition of the role of language and the arts and commitment to each child's potential and holistic development. In 2011, the Irish government published a strategy aimed to improve standards of literacy and numeracy among children and…

This document talks about immigrant children, who are defined here as either children born in another country (within or outside Europe) or children whose parents or grandparents were born in another country. So the term "immigrant children" used here covers various situations, which can be referred to in other contexts as…

Migration flows are profoundly changing the composition of classrooms. Results from the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) reveal that in 2015, almost one in four 15-year-old students in OECD countries reported that they were either foreign-born or had at least one foreign-born parent. Between 2003 and 2015, the share of…

Weighted student funding (WSF) is used in several U.S. cities as a method for providing more funds to schools with high concentrations of disadvantaged students. The practice has been used successfully in the Netherlands since 1985. Several factors make the success of the Dutch system unlikely to transfer to the United States, including the Dutch…

This report focuses on the development of reading proficiency during the transition from adolescence to early adulthood. The span of time between the ages of 15 and 24 is a critical period of development for young people. Once compulsory education is completed, individual decisions about post-secondary education, employment and other life choices…

As the ongoing national indicator of what American students know and can do, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in Reading regularly collects achievement information on representative samples of students in grades 4, 8, and 12. Through "The Nation's Report Card," the NAEP Reading Assessment reports how well students…