This paper discusses findings from the Danish contribution to the EASE project, a European research project running from 2008 to 2010 on early literacy in relation to the transition from childcare to school. It explores a holistic inclusive approach to early literacy that resists a narrow accountability-oriented Danish policy (mirroring…

Today, many higher educational institutions are forward thinking about promoting strategic initiatives by establishing partnerships with other universities nationally and internationally. Being financial and academically savvy, universities are reaching out to meet the demands of public interests in different types of college programs and…

Educational affordances are worthy of being explored because the affordances of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) provide the pedagogical effects for promoting cognitive acceleration, increasing the self-management of students, facilitating data collection, and presentation in science learning. This study aims to explore educational…

Class-size reduction (CSR) mandates presuppose that resources provided to reduce class size will have a larger impact on student outcomes than resources that districts can spend as they see fit. I estimate the impact of Florida's statewide CSR policy by comparing the deviations from prior achievement trends in districts that were required to…

This paper studies the optimal allocation of resources--in terms of school management, teachers, supporting employees and materials--in secondary schools. We use a flexible budget constrained output distance function model to estimate both technical and allocative efficiency scores for 448 Dutch secondary schools between 2002 and 2007. The results…

Evidence on the effectiveness of school inputs remains inconclusive, partly due to the challenge of identification as families sort themselves into school districts and resources are potentially allocated to compensate (or reinforce) differences in pupil abilities. Using variation in school resources induced by the location of waterfalls in…

Every day students from across the United States enter their math classrooms, take their seats, sit passively as their teachers teach the content, and then go home only marginally prepared to solve the problems their teachers assigned. Although the challenges of teaching are universal and as old as Methuselah, the advantage today is that educators…

This article documents regional demand for human-environment educational resources via assessment of public knowledge of the environmental crisis known as the Dust Bowl. The steadily eroding knowledge-base on the topic is discussed along with the desire for enhanced Dust Bowl educational resources. Regionally focused educational activities…

In May, Congresswoman Judy Chu issued a report entitled: "Strengthening Our Schools: A New Framework and Principles for Revising School Improvement Grants." Rather than the usual limited two-component blueprint framework that focuses only on instruction and management/governance, Representative Chu's report adopts a three-component framework. This…

What needs to be considered when establishing a writing center? Writing labs have a long history on college campuses, the main purpose of which is to assist students to become better writers. Although the information on writing centers at the high school level is at best, limited, the literature reported that the number of students using writing…

Two panels of practicing chemists and physicists met in summer 2007 to review Virginia's content standards in the high school capstone courses of chemistry and physics. Those panels were sponsored by the Virginia secretary of education and NASA, and the findings and recommendations were meant to help inform the 2010 septennial review of Virginia's…

In its broadest sense, open content refers to material published under a license that allows any user to edit, adapt, remix, and distribute it. It is distinct from free content, which is in the public domain and has no significant legal restrictions on its modification. In a much-publicized action in January 2008, Florida became the first state to…

Gadi Paskoff just completed his freshman year of high school. He's an honor student, accomplished musician, and sports fanatic. He is also a staff writer for Freestyle, a section in the "Lancaster Intelligencer Journal/New Era's" Saturday edition. Paskoff hit a homerun with his June 20 article, "Learning Should Be More than Technology." Reflecting…

In this article, the author shares what he learned at the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) Annual Meeting held in November 2009 in Atlanta. At NCSS 2009, the author realized how far behind he is with technological advances applied to classroom instruction. Many school districts and individual schools prevent students from using cell…

The author shares the challenges faced in her social studies methods class due to the constraints of NCLB. By incorporating the jackdaw kit project within her social studies methods course, her candidates were able to connect what they were talking about in methods and apply it to their students teaching situations where there was little time for…