In this article, an analogy is drawn between processes of land-grabbing or land enclosures and music education professionalization. It is suggested that specializations in musicing and music teaching serve to discourage participation or create musical helplessness on the part of those who don't view themselves as "musically inclined."…

This article make a case for the importance of background knowledge in children's comprehension. It suggests that differences in background knowledge may account for differences in understanding text for low- and middle-income children. It then describes strategies for building background knowledge in the age of common core standards.

In this article, I first take on the issue of standards and the degree to which they do or do not contribute to the improvement of language and literacy outcomes for children in multilingual societies. Then I consider the relation of standards to language and, finally, raise the vexed issue of content knowledge and its relation to standards, on…

The current quasi-experimental study compared two sections of a course, one that included diversity content and one that did not. The authors obtained pretest and posttest data on students' attitudes toward a number of different minority groups and on their levels of course content knowledge. The authors also examined two questions: first, whether…

This study examines the preparation of preservice elementary teaching candidates in science content and methods courses and the relationship of their coursework to future teaching. One-hundred-five undergraduate elementary education majors participated in the study. Data was gathered through the completion of a background questionnaire and…

Not since the launch of the Soviet Sputnik satellite spurred the federal government to begin investing in science and mathematics education through the National Defense Education Act have these two areas of the school curriculum been so high on state and federal policy agendas. Policy makers, business leaders, educators, and the media again worry…

The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation has commissioned studies of state academic standards in five core subjects. This is the fourth of these studies, focusing on state standards for mathematics. For this evaluation of mathematics standards, researchers developed nine criteria under the four areas of: clarity, content, reason, and negative qualities.…

The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation has commissioned studies of state academic standards in five core subjects. This is the third of these studies, concentrating on geography, the core subject that has been the most neglected in the U.S. academic curriculum. Standards documents were solicited from all the states, and were submitted by 38 states and…

The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation has commissioned studies of state academic standards in five core subjects. This is the second of these studies, focusing on standards for history. After the controversy surrounding the proposed "national history standards" in 1994, history has become a subject with no generally accepted national standards.…

The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation has commissioned studies of state academic standards in five core subjects. This is the fifth of these studies, focusing on state standards for science. Thirty-six states presented standards for evaluation. Some states were in the process of revising standards, while others simply had no standards to present.…