Comprehensive school physical activity programs (CSPAPs) aim to promote physical activity and healthy lifestyles among school-age children and adolescents. Physical educators are highly qualified individuals taking on the role of certified physical activity leaders. Physical education teacher education (PETE) programs should consider preparing…

The author is a long-time advocate inside the Labour Party for ending selective education and the 11-plus. She outlines how Labour Party frontbenchers routinely ignore or deflect calls from Party members to stand up for comprehensive education in both word and deed. As UKIP, whose policy is to extend selective education more widely, rises in the…

To be recognized and adopted, the promise and potential of national standards must validate the instructional role of the school librarian and build formative knowledge through authentic process and products. Inquiry is a direct link to those dimensions. Standards that are rigorous and relevant optimize the developing brain's affinity for building…

Many school leaders believe that advisories are not worth the investment. The common view is that advisory is a "soft" offering that does not specifically address high-stakes tests, curricula, and instruction. But when executed properly, advisories address students' needs so that test scores improve, classroom instruction is supported, parents are…

This article explores the connection between dropping out of school and being incarcerated, particularly for youth, including students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, students from poverty, and students with disabilities, who have been shown to be at higher risk for both. This article seeks to shift focus away from a…

Behind the thin veil of the Conservative regime's rationale of deficit reduction hides the final demolition of public comprehensive education and Raymond Williams's more expansive long revolution unfolding over a century of creating a democratic state that affords opportunity, voice and justice for all. Restoring the politics of a pre-war or…

The first national youth fitness evaluation conducted in the United States was in 1958. Since that time, schools have continued to administer fitness evaluations using a variety of tests with no national-level assessment of youth fitness [Institute of Medicine (IOM), 2012]. However, in September 2012, the Presidential Youth Fitness Program (PYFP)…

The "National Physical Activity Plan", as well as professional and government agencies (NASPE, 2008a; US Department of Health and Human Services, 2000) acknowledge pre-kindergarten (pre-K) children should be part of comprehensive school physical activity initiatives anchored in quality physical education programming. These…

For many English language learners, the endgame isn't passing state exams--it's attending and graduating from college. Yet schools often focus on a lower target: proficiency. To support the transition of English language learners to postsecondary success, schools should create formal transition plans, provide differentiated guidance, focus on…

The current educational reform agenda requires that stakeholders in the school community help all students graduate. The U.S. Department of Education's "A Blueprint for Reform: Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act" sends all stakeholders a clear message to take action that results in every student completing high school…

The term "college and career ready" has become widely used as a result of the proposed Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) reauthorization and Common Core State Standards movement. As schools move toward what may be considered a moral and economic imperative for the nation's students, it is essential that they first identify the gaps of…

This study draws from 4 years of qualitative case study data to describe how programmatic and district factors interacted to affect reform sustainability in two school districts--one urban and the other suburban. These districts have been implementing a reform developed by the National Network of Partnership Schools (NNPS) for over a decade. NNPS…

During the 2008-2009 school year, faculty members at New Fairfield (CT) Middle School examined relevance and student engagement in relation to student achievement. Subtle clues indicated that students were not fully engaged in their learning: many students did not relate their classroom experiences to their personal reality or to their vision of…

One of the biggest fears and challenges a parent of a child with special needs faces is navigating the post-22 landscape. When a child hits the age of 22, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) is no longer required to provide daily services and support. Whatever the abilities, or disabilities, of a child, every parent has the…

The authors conducted a third-party study of the student achievement effects of Struggling Schools, a user-generated approach to Comprehensive School Reform (CSR). The design was a quasiexperimental, pre-post matched sample (N = 180) with school as unit of analysis, drawing on 3 years of achievement data from standardized external assessments.…