The paper reviews findings and implications of curriculum based assessment (CBA), an approach focusing on collecting, interpreting, and using data to help lower achieving students have opportunities for success in mainstreamed settings. An instructional delivery model is presented to guage the probability of task success and provide a structure…

Contending that the four commonplaces of defensible educational thought (the learner, the teacher, the milieu, and the subject matter) do not deal with the complexities of time and its implications for curriculum and instruction, this paper presents time as a crucial element in curricular deliberation. Various aspects of time in the school setting…

A description is presented of an improvement program that focused upon a small, flexible, open primary school. The school had been targeted for improvement because of rather low test scores. Improvement efforts focused on findings from four basic strands of school research: (1) structured learning environment; (2) academic feedback; (3) high…

At the end of the 1992-93 school year, Dutch schools finished their preparations for a new core curriculum for the first stage of secondary education. One of the problems teachers faced in implementing this curriculum was the problem of class heterogeneity. How teachers dealt with heterogeneity was studied through an examination of the use of…

This paper presents ideas relating to curriculum organization from the Far West Laboratory for Educational Research and Development publication, "Excellence in Our Schools: Making It Happen," which attempted to synthesize nine reports written in response to the National Commission on Excellence in Education report, "A Nation at…

This speech discusses problems that principals face in trying to implement effective school strategies, describes ongoing research in instructional management, and identifies school improvement strategies used by particularly effective principals. The first section addresses practical problems in finding the appropriate balance between high…

This paper presents one researcher's premise that the most important variable in determining classroom effectiveness is the congruence of the delivered curriculum with the desired outcomes or, that students be given the opportunity to learn what is expected of them. This theory presupposes that curriculum expectations be made clear to students,…

In light of concerns that previous staff development projects did not truly capture life in the classroom, and that there may be a gap between one's previous elementary and current university teaching experiences, a teacher educator used a semester sabbatical to shadow six first-grade teachers in order to inform thinking and practice in teaching…

Two ethnic groups of students, majority and minority, were compared on variables of a Psychological Productivity Model. Black and Hispanic students were grouped as minorities, and White students were considered majority students. Participants were 120 high school students from an urban high school in the Southwest. The Psychological Productivity…