Nearly all states have standards for student learning and they have assessment programs to measure students' proficiency on those standards. But schools within each state nonetheless are left to develop their own standards-based student report cards as the primary means of communicating information about students' performance. To address the…

The Massachusetts charter movement facilitated Boston's development of pilot schools (in-district charters), which posed a dilemma for staff, students, board members, and codirectors of Fenway Middle College High School. A year later, a coalition of pilot school leaders is glad they stayed in the system and pursued high-level educational…

The Texas Scholars Program, a joint business/education venture, is a low-cost program that motivates the "forgotten majority" (lower ranked students) to complete a rigorous academic curriculum preparing them for the labor market or postsecondary education. Since 1989, Eastman Chemical Company business leaders have been…

The multi-age teams (MATs) at one Georgia middle school fostered continuous, individual student progress unachievable in more conventional classrooms. In MAT groups, assignments to classes were based on students' interests, abilities, performance, and other maturational factors, regardless of chronological age. Opportunities for remediation and…