This qualitative study explores how teachers implement literacy pedagogies that affirm and engage students despite facing restrictive literacy mandates. We interviewed a focus group of four veteran Revolutionary Loving kindergarten through fifth-grade teachers from three Title 1 schools in the southeastern United States. Additionally, the study…

Background: Many elementary schools have policies requiring a minimum amount of physical education (PE). However, few schools comply with local/state PE policy and little is known about how to improve adherence. We evaluated changes in PE among fifth-grade classes, following participatory action research efforts to improve PE quantity and policy…

Despite policy efforts to encourage multiple measures of performance in newly developing teacher evaluation systems, practical constraints often result in evaluations based predominantly on formal classroom observations. Yet there is limited knowledge of how these observational measures relate to student achievement. This article leverages the…

The number of students that live in families where a language other than English is spoken has risen relative to the English-only households in the United States over the last 25 years. These students face the dual challenge of mastering English while acquiring academic skills and knowledge. The education of these students has been shaped by…

The evidence is clear: better teachers improve student outcomes, ranging from test scores to college attendance rates to career earnings. Federal policy has begun to catch up with these findings in its recent shift from an effort to ensure that all teachers have traditional credentials to policies intended to incentivize states to evaluate and…

The United States Department of Education (USED) granted 11 states waivers (eight full waivers and three conditional waivers) to provide what the USED termed "flexibility" from meeting some of the requirements in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Much of the flexibility relieves schools from the Adequate Yearly Progress mandate that requires…

Problem Statement: Since the 1970s, scientific literacy has been a major goal of national educational systems throughout the world, and thus reform movements in science education call for all students to be scientifically literate. Despite some good curricular changes and developments across the globe, much remains to be achieved. Given that…

This annual report provides information for the 2010-11 school year on grade-level retention and student performance in the Texas public school system. Student retention and promotion data are reported with data on the performance of students in Grades 3-10 on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) reading and mathematics tests. [For…

The structure of the teaching profession leaves teachers professionally and personally isolated from other adults. This article will discuss the results of an ethnography focused on the rare informal social interaction that occurs among teachers in a United States' school, with a particular focus on the lunch hour. Specifically, this article…