Americans live in a great nation, one in which every child is entitled to an education that will help that child reach success. But the debate has raged for years about whether the nation's education system is fulfilling the promise of not just an education, but an education of the highest caliber. Whenever the issue of school reform is addressed,…

In the early 1990s, in an effort to enhance their majors' ability to communicate mathematical ideas, the Mathematics Department at Bellarmine University added a capstone course, "Readings in Mathematics," to the curriculum of each degree program in the department. We provide an overview of the course, noting its unique aspects, with…

The idea of teacher leadership holds an immense and intuitive appeal. Most educators agree that teacher leaders are essential to fostering a climate of authentic and robust leadership and learning across a school. Teacher leadership is peer leading at its most authentic, demanding, and empowering. While the value of teacher leadership may be…

Media depictions of San Francisco show idyllic images of fog pouring under the Golden Gate Bridge or happy tourists riding cable cars, but rarely the mostly nonwhite neighborhoods of the east side. San Francisco public schools have a bad track record of mimicking this masquerade, with very low numbers of African American and Latina/o students…

Student retention is an ongoing concern of many postsecondary institutions (Kuh, 2008). Student engagement might be a key to addressing retention issues in terms of building relationships between students and their college. One technical college has found that attrition in learning support math courses contributes greatly to the overall college…

Universities have both social and cultural contexts, and new students need to participate effectively in both in order to succeed in this environment. With ever increasing numbers of students and the diversity of the contemporary university population, institutions have to consider innovative ways to effectively engage individuals. In terms of…

This brief offers lessons learned from California State University teacher preparation programs engaged in using data to inform improvement efforts. The authors consider teacher preparation programs as systems that can undergo continuous, data-driven improvement through an improvement science approach. Teacher preparation programs typically have…

For over 30 years, Movement for Canadian Literacy (MCL) has provided a forum and voice for literacy organizations, practitioners and learners across the country. In partnership with its member literacy coalitions, learner representatives from every province and territory and other key stakeholders, MCL has supported the literacy and essential…

This article describes the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. This Arizona high school magnet law program offers the ideal 21st century education--one that teaches skills through core subjects and interdisciplinary themes, uses innovative learning methods, and emphasizes higher order thinking skills. Students agree that the program has helped…

To improve the employment rates and earnings of Americans workers, we need to create more-coherent and more-effective education and workforce development systems, focusing primarily (though not exclusively) on disadvantaged youth and adults, and with education and training more clearly targeted towards firms and sectors that provide good-paying…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to introduce and describe the features of a new e-learning quality framework developed for a large multi-campus university. The framework is explicitly designed to improve the quality of e-learning sites and the quality of online student learning, by developing the skills of the academics who design the sites.…

Swimming is considered by many to be a significant form of physical activity with many health benefits. Few opportunities exist for African American youth to participate in programs focused on providing developmentally appropriate swim instruction, due in part to a lack of aquatic facilities and programs in urban schools and communities. In an…

Discussions on academic advising theory have centered on application from many disciplines; however, academic advising is unlike any other field, and therefore, theories from other disciplines do not correspond with all of the unique goals of advising: assisting students in understanding the meaning of higher education, supporting students in…

Discusses how teachers can become certified as distance learning specialists and how to improve skills needed to teach with telecommunications technologies. Highlights include programs in North Carolina; Utah State University's Distance Learning Endorsement Program; the University of Wisconsin's Distance Education Certificate Program; and the…

Explores the similarities and differences among three thinking skills programs that help students analyze and evaluate their own problem-solving skills. (MLF)