This article is a response to a study "Gifted or ADHD? The Possibilities of Misdiagnosis," by D. Niall Hartnett, Jason Nelson, and Anne Rinn. A critique of the authors' claim about misdiagnosis of gifted children with ADHD, as well as their experiment and conclusions, is presented. The paper disputes an idea, prevalent in the gifted education…

Because words represent the building blocks upon which the facility to produce and comprehend language at all levels is based, the capacity of a child to learn words has immense impact on his or her developing abilities to communicate and engage properly with the outside world. Both the Keynote Article and the Commentaries in this issue…

Response to Intervention (RTI) is a school-wide, integrative approach to instruction and intervention that provides a continuum of services to all students, both within general and special education. Further, RTI focuses on the frequent monitoring of student progress using formative and summative assessments, and providing students with…

The Achieving the Dream (ATD) initiative works with more than 100 community colleges across the United States with the specific goal of increasing student success. Together, Achieving the Dream colleges graduate or transfer close to 250,000 students a year. With just a 5 percent increase in graduation rates, individuals can positively impact the…

The National Staff Development Council (NSDC), a private, nonprofit association, has outlined high standards for educator professional learning. One demonstration of NSDC's commitment to the goal of ensuring all schools support and use high standards for professional learning is the organization's investment in developing an instrument to assess…

Financial aid programs are supposed to improve access and affordability in higher education. The effectiveness of these programs is increasingly being questioned as college attainment figures stagnate and the financial burden on students and families continues to climb year after year. This report identifies the main culprit for this…

Background: In 2008 primary education in England reached, historically, another important phase in its development. Government reviewed the primary curriculum and some aspects of the national system of assessment. These government reviews coincided with an independent "Primary Review" based at the University of Cambridge to which the…

On a general level, the objective of diagnostic classifications models (DCMs) lies in a classification of individuals regarding multiple latent skills. In this article, the authors show that this objective can be achieved by multidimensional adaptive testing (MAT) as well. The authors discuss whether or not the restricted applicability of DCMs can…

Creation of biases and stereotypes has led to individual and institutional discrimination of students who are emotionally and behaviorally disturbed (EBD). The lack of supports and under utilized research based techniques by educational staff has major implications on the success of students with EBD in various settings. Providing appropriate…

Over thousands of years the brain has evolved. Our ability to change its structure is quite limited. What we can do is change the way we work with the brain and appeal to it. These notions are the building blocks for this paper. Three strands of intellectual work (neuroscience to include social intelligence, pedagogy, and environment/culture) are…

Issued by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, "A School Privatization Primer for Michigan School Officials, Media and Residents" examines the "contracting out" of public school support services--specifically food, transportation, and custodial services. The report describes the prevalence of contracting out and sets forth…

A growing number of states and communities are implementing the Pyramid Model in early care and education settings, and in many of these places there are also early childhood mental health consultation (ECMHC) programs operating. This policy brief provides an overview of ECMHC, how it can support the implementation of the Pyramid Model and the…

In response to the need for cross-nationally comparable evidence on student performance, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) launched the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 1997. PISA represents a commitment by governments to monitor the outcomes of education systems through measuring…

This report presents the findings of the formative evaluation of the Understanding the Early Years (UEY) Initiative. The evaluation was conducted to examine issues of implementation and design, early progress in achieving immediate objectives, and issues related to accountability. The evaluation team was also asked to provide preliminary guidance…

Today's society is global, multicultural, multilingual, and digitally connected. Learning no longer occurs just in the classroom, delivered by teachers. At the same time, research has repeatedly shown that no single strategy or approach will turn around low-performing schools and reengage students. As a result, districts and schools are reaching…