The 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) assessed the English literacy skills of a nationally representative sample of more than 19,000 U.S. adults (age 16 and older) residing in households and correctional institutions. NAAL is the first national assessment of adult literacy since the 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS). The…

A call to engagement at Fort Hays State University (FHSU) led to significant curricular and assessment changes in the university's Department of Political Science. The university unveiled the Year of the Department (YOTD) as "an ongoing strategic initiative for orchestrating change and aligning people, systems and culture at the basic unit…

In this article, the authors offer an approach to teaching that can help students prepare to write for the workplace and in the community: a case study of community-based writing. In this case-study project, students work in groups to study the writing needs and practices of a community-based group or organization, such as a local public library,…

The turn of the century brought a profound change in the accreditation of teacher preparation programs. This shift--from curriculum-based reviews to standards-based reviews--took place in the context of the accountability movement of the late 20th century. The 21st century ushered in what many refer to as "a culture of evidence." From…

This study tests the use of computer-assisted grading rubrics compared to other grading methods with respect to the efficiency and effectiveness of different grading processes for subjective assignments. The test was performed on a large Introduction to Business course. The students in this course were randomly assigned to four treatment groups…

Classroom teachers, specialists and school principals will find this "List of Assessment Resources for English as a Second Language (ESL)" useful for determining the level of instruction for new students, measuring student growth, communicating about student learning, and for applying for ESL funding and for special considerations on…

This edition of "Professional Standards" contains the revised unit standards and accreditation decisions approved by National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education's (NCATE's) Executive Board in 2007. All teacher preparation institutions with visits scheduled in fall 2008 and beyond will be reviewed under these standards, and…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of reading a model written assignment, generating a list of criteria for the assignment, and self-assessing according to a rubric, as well as gender, time spent writing, prior rubric use, and previous achievement on elementary school students' scores for a written assignment (N = 116).…

The accreditation process is typically complicated and time consuming. A current trend in higher education has been for units, programs, and institutions to use Internet-based commercial assessment products to simplify this process. The integration of an online-assessment product as a means to monitor and verify student learning within a formal…

Teacher education programs use a variety of assessment strategies to help their prospective teachers acquire the teaching skills necessary to teach physical education. Some educators have criticized teacher education for perpetuating the view that learning to teach is merely a personal challenge to acquire skills such as giving clear directions…

This study focuses on an evaluation project that served as a powerful professional development experience for teachers and leaders in a network of Chicago small schools. The network of small schools led by the Chicago High School Redesign Initiative is based on the Authentic Intellectual Achievement (AIA) framework originally conceived by Fred…

Most faculty will agree that students must learn to write well (Emerson, MacKay, MacKay, & Funnell, 2006), and in the sciences, a variety of approaches have been taken. In the College of Physical and Engineering Science at the University of Guelph, we have developed a way of embedding research, writing, and analytical skills into an…

This study examined the understanding of nature of science among participants in their final year of a 4-year undergraduate teacher education program at a Midwest liberal arts university. The Logic Model Process was used as an integrative framework to focus the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of the data for the purpose of…

The two-fold purpose of the study was to determine whether or not the Arkansas Leadership Academy's Master Principal Institute's (MPI) five curriculum content standards were aligned with the literature of effective educational leadership practices, and to ascertain if there were significant relationships among the principals' leadership practices…

Finding teaching models and strategies that benefit learners while incorporating skills students will need in the future, such as using technology, is important. This study examined the problem of whether Webquests, an inquiry-based teaching strategy where much of the information is found online, are a beneficial way to integrate technology into…