Independent schools--and their teachers and administrators--are, as the name suggests, fiercely independent. So when the Common Core State Standards hit the national stage in March 2010 and became the center of the national conversation on education, it was no surprise that the majority of independent schools dismissed the standards as another…

In 2004 the General Assembly of the State of Ohio (USA) enacted Senate Bill 2, which created the Educator Standards Board "to develop and recommend to the state board of education standards for entering and continuing in the teaching and principalship professions". Since that time the Ohio Department of Education has established a…

Initiatives such as Response to Intervention (RTI) and the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts (CCSS-ELA) have the potential to positively impact progress toward the goal of literacy for all. Because the CCSS-ELA will guide the content of the curriculum, instruction and assessment in the large number of adopting states, they will…

For years California has been a leader in public education. In 1999, the state implemented some of the strongest content standards in the country through its main accountability metric, the Academic Performance Index (API). The state has also signed onto the Common Core State Standards, taking important steps to ensure its students are college-…

Technological progress has consistently driven remarkable advances in the U.S. economy, yet K-12 education sees little technological change compared to other sectors, even as U.S. K-12 students increasingly lag behind students in other nations. This proposal considers how we can take a signature American strength--innovation--and apply it to K-12…

The Educational Policy Improvement Center (EPIC) conducted a crosswalk between the Deeper Learning Skills (DLS) and the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). The purpose of the crosswalk was to understand the ways in which strategies for deeper learning relate to the CCSS. This comparison was not solely or simply an alignment study, although some…

The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) were developed as part of a broader effort coordinated by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers to develop common state standards in key subjects. Released in 2010, the CCSSM are intended to provide a blueprint for the…

Each year, considerable resources are spent on professional development to build teacher knowledge and skills. Yet not much is known about its impact on student achievement. Research confirms that professional development can affect teacher practice, but research has yet to confirm if those changes in practice improve student learning.…

In this statement, Katherine M. Iritani, Acting Director, Health Care reports that dental disease remains a significant problem for children in Medicaid. Although dental services are a mandatory benefit for the 30 million children served by Medicaid, these children often experience elevated levels of dental problems and have difficulty finding…

The federal government has had a long-standing commitment to ensuring access of English Learner (EL) students to a meaningful education. As early as 1968, the "Elementary and Secondary Education Act" ("ESEA") contained provisions for supporting the education of EL students and in its 1974 landmark decision, "Lau v.…

Since the passage of No Child Left Behind, large-scale assessments have come to play a central role in federal and state education accountability systems. Teachers and parents have expressed a number of concerns about their state testing programs, such as too much time devoted to testing and the high-stakes use of testing for teacher evaluation.…

This report, part of the "Challenge to Lead" education goals series, documents the continued progress of SREB [Southern Regional Education Board] states in preparing early grades students for success in the middle grades--and beyond. It analyzes scores on state assessments and the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) and…

University-based teacher education programs and all of their components, including the content disciplines such as mathematics and science, are undergoing an unprecedented degree of scrutiny and challenge. Today, the entire concept of university-based teacher preparation is being questioned, mostly by critics outside the academy, and it is no…

The Indian Education -- Formula Grants to Local Education Agencies (Indian Education Formula Grant) program is authorized under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), as amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). It is the Department's principal vehicle for addressing the particular needs of Indian children. The program…

This article examines why state planning and policy for higher education are increasingly focused on increasing educational attainment, quality, and the productivity of the system. It presents four "stories" which illustrate initiatives to improve attainment, quality, and productivity, but fall far short of exhausting the available material.