Excellence and equity goals motivate much of American educational policy. These two goals are not always mutually reinforcing. Some policies boost average academic achievement even as they broaden educational inequalities. Others depress academic achievement even as they narrow inequalities. The twin goals of excellence and equity should lead…

This study compares the use and efficacy of assessment grading tools within postgraduate education courses in a regional Australian university and a regional university in the US. Specifically, we investigate how the quality of postgraduate education courses can be improved through the use of assessment rubrics or criterion referenced assessment…

Access to college has increased substantially over the last 50 years, but student success--defined as the combination of academic success and degree or certificate completion--has not kept pace. Student success, moreover, generally correlates with students' financial resources: Students from high-income families attend and complete college at…

Mindfulness, a construct that entails moment-to-moment effort to be aware of present experiences and positive attitudinal features, has become integrated into the sciences. The Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), one popular measure of mindfulness, exhibits different responses to positively and negatively worded items in nonmeditating…

One of the most challenging aspects of the teaching profession, at all levels, is to identify and illuminate assumptions--one's students' and one's own. This article describes how three members of the Hudson Valley Writing Project (HVWP) at the State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz worked closely with the National Writing Project's…

Katherine Magnuson's research focuses on the well-being and development of economically disadvantaged children and their families. In the first half of this brief Magnuson pulls together scholarship on the effects of poverty and inequality on children, especially from infancy to age five. Her scope goes beyond the social sciences to include new…

The authors detail their summer long pointed discussion with the Obama Administration--via an exchange of letters and telephone conversations--over initiatives in New York and other states that tie the evaluations of teachers and principals to student performance on standardized tests. The authors assert such initiatives should await further…

The New York Performance Standards Consortium includes urban public high schools that have successfully used a performance-based assessment option. Instead of exit exams, student assessments are based on specific performance-based assessment tasks. These schools have shown that it is possible to use qualitative data to make substantive decisions…

This article offers new directions in measuring racial isolation in schools. The most widely used measurement approach is to examine the mean on the distribution of school percentage non-White across non-White students (the isolation rate) or the percentage of non-White students in schools with large shares of non-Whites (e.g., 90% or more) at a…

Described here is a study on the efficacy of a digital media-rich curriculum based on the idea that children can learn best from "media synergy", that is, when children have opportunities to learn skills by engaging in repeated practice with them in many different formats and media (Neuman, 1995). The study is part of the "Ready to…

"Let's Begin with the Letter People"[R] is an early education curriculum that uses 26 thematic units to develop children's language and early literacy skills. A major focus is phonological awareness, including rhyming, word play, alliteration, and segmentation. Children are encouraged to learn as individuals, in small groups, and in a…

Objective: This study describes the development of an engagement scale for use with youth in residential treatment centers. Engagement includes attitude about treatment, bond with providers, and participation in treatment activities. Method: Interview data were collected at the midpoint in residence of 130 youth in two centers. Items were selected…

This paper describes the Science in the City seminar, an innovative approach to in-service and preservice science teacher development that bridges formal and informal science learning contexts. Drawing upon the tenets of design and evaluation research, the study focuses on the teachers' presentations of evidence of student learning from trips they…

Noting that information is needed about libraries' roles in literacy activities in terms of the outcomes, the Library Programs Office of the U.S. Department of Education awarded the Division of Library Development a grant to develop a model that would evaluate literacy activities in such a fashion. A result of this effort, this library literacy…

This report contains, in addition to the introduction and preface, 13 papers written by individuals working in the field of evaluation who present the concepts and practices of evaluation at their own particular distance education institutions. The introduction (Schuemer) gives a short outline of the evaluation nomenclature and an overview of the…