The purpose of the study was to understand transformative learning in teachers' critical colleague relationships while participating in online, collaborative action research. This included generation of theory by teacher action-researchers relevant to their own practice, with a view to teacher transformation over time. The study addressed the…

New Jersey's urban students traditionally don't do well on the high stakes NJ High School Proficiency Assessment. Most current remedial mathematics curricula provide students with a plethora of problems like those traditionally found on the state test. This approach is not working. Finding better ways to teach our urban students may help close…

The purpose of this study was to illuminate the qualitatively different ways in which three nurses with an associate degree (ADN) and three nurses with a baccalaureate degree (BSN) experience, conceptualize, perceive, and understand their own nursing practice within the context of their educational background. Using a phenomenographic methodology…

Despite high-stakes applications of assessment findings, assessment data are frequently collected in situations that are of low-stakes to examinees. Because low-stakes tests are of little consequence to the examinees, test-taking motivation and thus the validity of inferences drawn from unmotivated examinees' scores are of concern. The current…

A basic and classical assumption in the machine learning research area is "randomness assumption" (also known as i.i.d assumption), which states that data are assumed to be independent and identically generated by some known or unknown distribution. This assumption, which is the foundation of most existing approaches in the literature, simplifies…

The Council of the Great City Schools has prepared this ninth edition of Beating the Odds to give the nation an in-depth look at how big city schools are performing on the academic goals and standards set by the states. This analysis examines student achievement in mathematics and reading from spring 2006 through spring 2009. It also measures…

Although Response to Intervention (RTI) is a necessity for all schools, the truth is that supplemental instruction can never compensate for inadequate core instruction. That's why you need this book's improved approach to RTI. Authors Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey introduce you to a strengthened model of RTI that emphasizes formative assessment…

In this report, the authors identify public schools whose doors are effectively closed to poor children. These institutions--generally found in wealthy urban enclaves or well-heeled suburbs--educate many of the children of America's elite while proudly waving the "public school" flag. But they hardly embody the "common school" ideal. In fact, by…

Recent years have seen increased interest in data-driven decision making in education; that is, using various types of data, particularly quantitative assessment data, to inform a range of decisions in schools and classrooms. At the same time, districts, states, and schools have invested resources in tools designed to provide teachers, principals,…

The growing English learner student population in California faces the daunting challenge of both meeting the academic expectations of school curriculum while also learning to speak, write, read, and understand a new language. Often it is the task of school administrators to choose, plan, implement, and maintain instructional programs that best…

Knowledge discovery is a wide ranged process including data mining, which is used to find out meaningful and useful patterns in large amounts of data. In order to explore the factors having impact on the success of university students, knowledge discovery software, called MUSKUP, has been developed and tested on student data. In this system a…

Background: The involvement of school-age children in participatory research is described in the context of a school district-university partnership to prevent obesity in children. The purpose of this study was to elicit, from children in kindergarten (K) through sixth grade, perceptions of foods and activities that would inform the design of…

In this article, the authors tackle the question of whether the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act has affected student achievement since its enactment in 2002. They present new research that takes on the challenge of distinguishing the law's effects from the myriad other factors at work over the past eight years. The results suggest that its…

An educational priority of many nations is to enhance mathematical learning in early childhood. One area in need of special attention is that of statistics. This paper argues for a renewed focus on statistical reasoning in the beginning school years, with opportunities for children to engage in data modelling activities. Such modelling involves…

Accountability policies imply much about high school teachers' abilities and willingness to use state assessment data to improve instruction. This study asked what teacher- and school-level variables best predict how frequently teachers use state assessment data and how much instructional benefit they derive from use of data. Research has…