Teachers have come under increased pressure to improve educational outcomes as Australia has sought to meet the challenges of competing on an international level. This intensified pressure has been accompanied by improved levels of funding, a National Curriculum for all Australian states, and territories, along with assessments to measure these…

The aim of the paper is to discuss recent trends related to tendencies in education policy and education worldwide. Neoliberal education policy as a coherent cross-national education policy set by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) standards, Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) tests, and other…

The author of this article questions what has been gained from Berrett's exploration of the connections between competency development and individual required courses. She concludes from this analysis that students' competency development is a responsibility that cuts across many courses and many levels of expected student proficiency. To put it…

Using Head Start as an example of a compensatory social program based on a liberal egalitarian view of justice, this paper shows how all such programs are fundamentally flawed. In spite of any good intentions, by creating a discourse of deficiency and attempting amelioration through segregation this approach contains the seeds of its own failure.…

The process of effective teaching--teaching that directly leads to student learning of standards-based content--is tenuous at best and easily disrupted by contextual and behavioral factors. In this commentary, I discuss the role of student support and mediation in teacher effectiveness and curricular reform. The most vocal students in physical…

Parents and policymakers have long sought to measure the quality of their public schools and to report that publicly in ways that are fair and equitable. In recent years, with a renewed focus on student outcomes, this effort has become a very public and sometimes acrimonious debate. With this project, Education Commission of the States (ECS)…

Universities across the nation have been called upon to provide evidence of student learning through direct means of assessment. Value-added assessment, which aims to document the development of student learning from the beginning of the university experience to the end, has been called "accountability's new frontier" by the American…

In this article, the author examines the role that teachers play in the moral development of American students. Historically, one of public education's purposes in America has been the development of moral citizens. However, educators currently face more academic accountability due to No Child Left Behind. Consequently, teachers must strike a…

The Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education (CTE) Improvement Act was recently passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush. Past and present Perkins legislation is examined in this paper in order to identify the roles and responsibilities of CTE teachers in meeting the current and future needs of the profession. This paper…

The United States educational system is not meeting the increasing demand for highly skilled workers required in the international marketplace. While local, state, and federal governments spend $221 billion on public elementary and secondary education, only a small percentage of the nation's students have adequate reasoning and problem-solving…

Standards-based reform is about setting standards and measuring attainment in criterion-referenced ways. Assessments should measure and monitor students' current achievement and progress over time. As Massachusetts testing deficiencies illustrate, assessments must stress longitudinal over cross-sectional designs, valued performances, developmental…

Some examples of the conflict between the child-centered educational approach and the development of objectives-based programs are drawn from experiences in Ontario (Canada) concerning student achievement assessment. Educational implications of these two conflicting models are considered, highlighting weaknesses of the child-centered approach.…

The College Outcomes Evaluation Program (COEP), intended to be a comprehensive assessment of higher education in New Jersey, focuses on outcomes in order to improve undergraduate education. After an introduction covering the national perspective, New Jersey's efforts, COEP, and rationale and principles, subcommittee reports summarize the content…

This report focuses on assessing the quality of undergraduate education. A framework for thinking about the topic is provided, followed by a discussion of the ways in which the educational context is typically organized and student achievement is typically measured, with suggestions for new indicators and measures. The significance of contexts and…

Discusses cooperative learning, asserting that students must be individually accountable and credited for their efforts to help teammates attain goals. Describes the Peer and Self-Evaluation System (PSES), a new and reliable procedure in which students identify and record team skills and receive confidential feedback regarding personal strengths…