In an attempt to understand how a narrowed version of accountability in the form of high-stakes assessment deepens inequity rather than improves educational equity, we examine three education documents in Jamaica using critical discourse analysis. Our two research questions were: How did each government document position the Grade Four Literacy…

Discusses looping, or multiyear assignment of children, as a strategy to ease the retention/social-promotion dilemma. Multiyear assignment gives teachers extra time to bring low-performing students up to grade level and develop stable, caring relationships with students. A suburban Kansas school's successful program is profiled. (24 references)…

In this paper, the authors use data from interviews and observations in four urban elementary schools, two high and two low performing, to examine how schools respond to high stakes accountability policies. The authors argue that school responses to high stakes accountability depend on school context. In low performing schools, responses focus…

Assessment was studied in two accelerated schools, the Daniel Webster Elementary School in San Francisco (California) and the Fairbanks Elementary School in Springfield (Missouri) from October 1990 to March 1991. The accelerated schools movement for disadvantaged children began in the mid-1980s when researchers at Stanford University (California)…

This book connects the educational conditions created by high-stakes testing to the students and teachers who are influenced or victimized by the currents driving this movement. The authors left their positions as teacher-educators and taught grades 3 and 4 for 1 year as regular teachers in one of America's most impoverished schools. Redbud…

This reaction paper presented at a conference on compensatory education begins with reviews of three studies prepared for the program and staffing session of the conference and dealing respectively with student-to-instructor ratios, instructional setting, and summer programs. The paper then presents the view that huge gains in achievement will not…

This study identifies the policy variables that are effective in increasing student verbal achievement in urban grammar schools and high schools, and estimates the impact of these variables upon verbal achievement, expected years of education completed by a typical student, and expected lifetime earnings of a typical student. A theoretical model…