An ethnographic study in two California school districts examines how court cases, federal and state legislation, local and state school board decisions, election results, and national reports interacted to constrain students' confidence to function at a particular level in English and the learning opportunities that a bilingual teacher could…

Interviews with 77 California teachers who either continued teaching bilingual education, switched to English immersion, or continued teaching English immersion sought their perspectives on impacts of Proposition 227 to the teaching profession, instructional practices, students, school culture, and teacher relationships. Implementation of…

Investigates the sincerity and validity of uptake as a measure of language learning by comparing the words students report they have learned after completing a listening task with the words they score correctly on a translation test. Results indicate that whereas uptake may have construct validity, its concurrent validity is uncertain. (16…

Examined the empirical validity of a model of human motivation as it applies to school success and failure, assessing how indicators of context, self, and action related to measures of risk and resiliency. Subjects were 10- to 16-year-old African American youth in 3 independent samples. Found that parental engagement predicted school performance…

A middle school teacher asked her students how they felt they learned best and how they felt a teacher could assess what they learned. Students perceived a large gap between their learning and what tests reflected they had learned. They provided suggestions for a more effective tool for measuring learning. (SM)

American youngsters could beat the socks off Asian kids if they too, studied constantly. Charter schools' ability to boost student achievement is unproven, and choice programs benefit some clients at others' expense. Schools should stress civic responsibility, not vocational training and the work ethic. Scholastic Aptitude Test scores rose in…

A study compared the performance on a national licensing examination of University of Southern California dental students in problem-based learning (PBL) versus those in conventional educational tracks. PBL track students scored significantly higher in all four discipline-based portions of the exam and also in the aggregate, and scored well in…

A discussion of why Asian students rank high on international assessment tests in science and mathematics reveals that Asian schools stress rote memorization and test taking to the extent that children don't have the opportunity to be children. The U.S. educational system's encouragement of critical thinking and nonacademic activities contributes…

Explores whether the outcomes of Catholic school students exceed those of public school students by comparing the math test scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress test for black children in public and Catholic schools in Washington D.C. Finds that D.C. Catholic school students do better even after adjusting for standard…

Presents an analysis of recorded weekly discussions between British student language teachers and their school-based mentors. Results found that, despite individual preferences and interpretations, all mentors supported principles related to positive classroom management, building relationships with pupils, maximum use of the target language, and…

Although progress has been made in developing a scientific basis for alcohol screening and brief intervention (SBI), training packages are necessary for its widespread dissemination in primary care settings. This paper evaluates a training package developed for the Cutting Back[R] SBI program. Three groups of medical personnel were compared before…

An analysis and assessment of the Course Redesign Project, which used technology to improve student learning and course satisfaction in large lecture courses at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Six disciplinary-diverse departments participated in the project. Technology was selected for the purpose of introducing active learning into…

Well-designed school health education should provide students with the knowledge and skills to prevent the health risk behaviors most responsible for the major causes of morbidity and mortality. This paper reports the methodology and findings of a West Virginia statewide health education assessment initiative and describes how the findings are…

This article describes the results of a three-year investigation into cheating by school personnel. The goals of this research were to measure the prevalence of cheating by teachers and administrators and to analyze the factors that predict cheating. Using data on test scores and student records from the Chicago Public Schools, the authors…

Planning is essential to creating safe schools and it is required by the Federal No Child Left Behind legislation (U.S. Department of Education, 2004) and implemented via district local education action plans. The implementation of these plans involves continuous monitoring and reevaluation of information pertinent to each campus. As such, this…