Paul Leather is New Hampshire's deputy commissioner of education. In this article he writes that he believes education policymakers over the past few decades have made two critical decisions that have had deep, deleterious effects on the overall public education system. First, by demanding that each school be evaluated based on a single externally…

The purpose of this correlational study was to test to see if there was a relationship between time reduction of the roles and responsibilities of a school counselor and the Response to Intervention (RTI) process in an elementary school setting. This study examined the perceived effects of the RTI process on the roles and responsibilities of a…

The National Research Center for Career and Technical Education (NRCCTE) had a unique status among federally funded research and development center in education. Its funding was authorized by the federal legislation for career and technical and administered by the Office of Vocational and Adult Education, not the Institute for Education Sciences.…

"Straight A's: Public Education Policy and Progress" is a biweekly newsletter that focuses on education news and events both in Washington, DC and around the country. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) Waiving Away High School Graduation Rate Accountability?: State NCLB Waiver Proposals Threaten to Weaken…

The primary objective of this paper is to suggest a mechanism by which current trends in public education, in particular the rise of externally defined numerical metrics of achievement to define school success, operate to shape school policy, curriculum and practice. Here, we argue that the modern school's focus on the cognitive dimension of…

Research and professional leadership standards identify specific ways in which principals directly influence school organization and community relationships and exert less direct, but critically important, influence on teaching quality and instructional effectiveness. Principals' roles are central to supporting and supervising teachers'…

Supplemental educational services (SES) are additional academic instruction designed to increase the academic achievement of students in schools in need of improvement. These services may include academic assistance such as tutoring, remediation and other educational interventions, provided that such approaches are consistent with the content and…

U.S. educators and policymakers are concerned about the poor performance of the public schools, particularly schools that serve students from low-income families. Although education is primarily a state function, the federal government also has a longstanding interest in improving education for disadvantaged students, and it targets funding to…

This report discusses issues involved in the debate over whether the United States should have national education standards, what must be considered in creating such standards, what problems must be addressed, and what trade-offs might be required among conflicting objectives. The first section provides a short summary of developments in education…

To support teachers with their classroom responsibilities, schools have increasingly turned to paraprofessionals for assistance, with the largest numbers of paraprofessionals employed in the field of special education. Owing to this important role that paraprofessionals now perform in the education of children with disabilities in the USA, we set…

How has No Child Left Behind (NCLB) affected you, your students, or your school? Educational Leadership wanted to know so we asked readers to tell us their stories. Some respondents questioned whether NCLB acknowledged the true purpose of education, many bemoan the seeming necessity of having to "teach to the test," and some have…

The purpose of this document is to identify the major issues related to Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and state education agency (SEA) general supervision roles and responsibilities in implementing IDEA by building on the work of the MPRRC through an analysis of information obtained from interviewing representatives of both the BIA and five SEAs.…

The U. S. Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) commissioned a six-year study that generated information needed to assess the achievements of students with disabilities in their elementary and middle school years in multiple domains. The Special Education Elementary Longitudinal Study (SEELS) is documenting the…