A study involving 199 private liberal arts college freshmen found a weak but statistically significant correlation between high school grade point average and freshman grade point average (FGPA) but not between Scholastic Aptitude Test scores and FGPA. For academically underprepared freshmen, motivation-related noncognitive variables significantly…

This article summarizes the effects of NCLB on school districts based on four years of evaluations conducted by the Center on Education Policy as part of the most comprehensive and continuous overview being undertaken of that policy.

"Chronicle of Higher Education" presents an abundant source of news and information for college and university faculty members and administrators. This February 25, 2005 issue of "Chronicle of Higher Education" includes the following articles: (1) "Sins of Admission" (Sumner, James); (2) "Admissions Today: 6…

The purpose of this article is to provide the reader with a conceptual understanding of the key elements in a three tiered Response to Intervention (RTI) model. The three tiered model is discussed in terms of how it would be applied in implementing an intervention program to promote the development of reading. The characteristics of interventions,…

Using network data from 40 groups, we examine the effect of social context on the gendering of power relations. By modeling reported data on power relations as the result of a stochastic response process that may be gendered, we examine how this gendering is related to group-level contextual factors. We find that much of what appears to be a…

Racial disparities in special and gifted education cannot be understood independently of a broad legacy of racial inequity woven into American public education. The results of a qualitative study illustrate the context within which minority disproportionality occurs. School respondents agreed with the NRC panel's conclusion that poverty makes an…

While much of the skill building revolves around the essential skills of reading and writing, additional skills needed to succeed in the workplace are not emphasized sufficiently in the traditional classroom format. Employers are looking for employees with good interpersonal as well as academic skills. Employees who can work as team members on…

School and government officials, system administrators and other policymakers offer a variety of reasons for engaging in high stakes testing: to monitor student performance, to measure teacher and/or school effectiveness, to ensure accountability, etc. Some of these reasons are good; others not. But the best reason--one that is never offered,…

Standards-based reform efforts are highly dependent on accurate assessment of all students, including those with disabilities. The accuracy of current large-scale assessments is undermined by construct-irrelevant factors including access barriers, a particular problem for students with disabilities. Testing accommodations such as the read-aloud…

This article unpacks the decision to decharter a successful urban middle school serving African American students, especially focusing on parental choice in a school caught between two urban reform initiatives: charter schooling and state takeovers of urban districts. Originally chartered by a university, DeCharter became a "school of choice" in…

Focus group methods for studying opinions and perceptions of school violence are effective for understanding differences among individuals, but cannot report these differences in a concise manner. Traditional quantitative methods for analyzing data from school violence perception surveys allow for the concise reporting of data, but cannot…

When the author was a little girl, her father told her the story of how he once saw the great Harry Houdini escape from a straight jacket. In the early 1900s, Houdini fascinated thousands of people by performing feats of life-threatening daring and agility. Houdini was a professional in the traditional sense: he acted alone, kept his trade secrets…

This paper presents an online course for assessing and developing lexical competence which grew out of one simple question: How many words do our students have? We start by highlighting the importance of vocabulary teaching in the second language learning process and the beneficial effects of multimedia on developing lexis. The first response to…

The passage of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990 mandated the provision of interventions for young children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) under the age of 3 years. Although Strain, McGee, and Kohler (2001) suggested that children with autism benefit from inclusive programming, inclusive early intervention programs are…

With the specter of No Child Left Behind hanging over their heads, educators should be wary of using disaggregated data to track selected populations of students and their progress through school. Such data can be misleading by showing that students are doing well, although they may be taking classes that are not challenging. Although the myth of…