The move toward assessments that measure student growth, rather than just proficiency, has been perceived as an improvement in state accountability systems. However, Michael Watson explains that, for many students, these measures present an incomplete picture. Because they are based on grade-level assessments, any growth achieved by students who…

Teaching and learning are interdependent terms, and the work of the teacher is to ensure that students learn. Teachers need to be clear on what they mean by "learning." Learning is often judged by what students accumulate in content or is based on a student's mastery of content as revealed by grades. However, for the author, there is…

Six years ago the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) took the unprecedented step of launching an effort to study and scale high-quality, evidence-based academic, social, and emotional learning in eight of the largest and most complex school systems in the country: Anchorage, Austin, Chicago, Cleveland, Nashville,…

The Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) incorporates challenging literacy standards into middle grades and high school content areas within a variety of academic disciplines, not just English/language arts courses. The Mathematics Design Collaborative (MDC) provides schools with instructional tools needed to help teachers understand and implement…

In the traditional public school system, the varied pace of student learning is often lost, and replaced with a "one size fits all" expectation for grade-level cohorts of students using normed, standards-based assessments. This reliance on cohort-based test scores continues through high school. Traditional measures are designed primarily…

Since 2006, 19 institutions across the United States have been trying to figure out how to work smarter through their participation in the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education. Drawing on data from the first year of the study, the robust, mixed-methods study the authors report in this article evaluated growth in the first year of…

Business students are increasingly seeking international experience in short-term, study abroad programs to enhance their intercultural knowledge, intercultural communication skills, and global perspectives to be more competitive in the global arena. Intuitively, universities initiating these programs and the students sojourning abroad believe in…

Proof of academic performance often serves as the litmus test for maintaining instructional practices and programs. Just as the national focus on academic improvement has gained momentum, so too has another movement calling for character education. Educators find themselves caught in the middle, questioning whether character education is just…