In this presentation, we introduce a conceptual framework for in-service professional development--the Whole Teacher approach, which attends simultaneously to the attitudes, knowledge, and practice of a teacher's growth. Putting the framework in operation, we describe a project designed to improve teachers' competence and increase children's…

Currently there are multiple teacher education reform policies being proposed, piloted, and debated at a variety of levels and by various interest groups, stakeholders, and policy-makers. Along with an unprecedented sense of urgency about these important goals, what most U.S. reforms have in common is increased accountability. Using a discourse…

This validity study examined the validity of Assessment, Evaluation, and Programming System, 2nd Edition (AEPS®), a curriculum-based, authentic assessment for infants and young children. The primary purposes were to: a) examine whether the AEPS® is a concurrently valid tool for measuring young children's language, literacy and pre-math skills for…

Are teachers who are faced with mandated assessments more likely or less likely to explore their students' performance in depth and use their discoveries to enrich learning? This is the story of how six first-grade teachers in New York City responded to a mandated performance assessment--and how that response compared to a set of informal,…

In the rush of day-to-day tasks and the daily demands of caring for young children, little time is left for conversation between administrators and teachers. Both sides often walk out of meetings feeling like little more than paperwork has been accomplished. Likewise, professional development becomes a paperwork formality. Both administrators and…

Electronic portfolios (eportfolios) are presented in the literature as a technological tool with significant potential for professional application. In New Zealand the introduction of eportfolios is a recent innovation, and not much is known about the ways in which learners view this technology or the ways in which it might support their learning…

For their ambitious project, called America at War, high school juniors at Da Vinci Charter Academy in the Davis (California) Joint Unified School District didn't just study history. They became historians. Their project offers compelling evidence of what students can accomplish through project-based learning (PBL), an instructional approach that…

Multiple-choice (MC) reading comprehension test items comprise three components: text passage, questions about the text, and MC answers. The construct validity of this format has been repeatedly criticized. In three between-subjects experiments, fourth graders (N[subscript 1] = 230, N[subscript 2] = 340, N[subscript 3] = 194) worked on three…

In a series of policy documents over the past decade, the idea of a "New Professionalism" for teachers has been constructed. It encompasses three core components: a national framework of professional standards; performance management; and continuing professional development (CPD). The planned interplay of these components into a coherent…

Early last week the U.S. Department of Education announced an unexpected 16 finalists for the first round of Race to the Top (RTT) funding--a veritable traffic jam in the Race to the Top. The finalists have requested a total of $6.5 billion in funds, but only $4.3 billion is up for grabs, and that needs to be spread over two rounds of competition.…

Most agree that schools have a special obligation to study the effectiveness of their educational programs and seek ways to improve student learning. Derek Bok, the former president of Harvard University, has persuasively argued that schools must envision themselves as "learning organizations." Like hospitals and businesses, Bok writes,…

This study adopted a multilevel modeling (MLM) approach to examine the contribution of rater and essay factors to variability in ESL essay holistic scores. Previous research aiming to explain variability in essay holistic scores has focused on either rater or essay factors. The few studies that have examined the contribution of more than one…

After some 65 years of international development assistance, it is still difficult to show the effectiveness of aid in ways that are fully convincing. In part, this reflects inadequacies in the evaluation systems of the bilateral, multilateral, and global organizations that provide official development aid. Underlying these weaknesses often are a…

The curriculum is established. Lesson plans are in place. Repertoire has been chosen. A regular rehearsal and performance schedule is underway. Now it is time to start evaluating how much and how well students are learning. Time, in other words, for one of the most essential--and trickiest--parts of the music educator's job: assessment. According…

Policymakers aiming to close the well-documented achievement gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students have increasingly turned their attention to issues of teacher quality. A number of studies have demonstrated that teachers are inequitably distributed across student subgroups by input measures like experience and qualifications, as well…