In this paper, we examine the effect of income on child development in the United States and the United Kingdom, as measured by scores on cognitive, behavioral, and social assessments. In line with previous results for the United States, we find that for both countries income generally has an effect on child development that is positive and…

This article describes changes in the practice of two teachers, observed over an 18-month period, who were participating in a study intended to support teachers in developing their use of assessment in support of learning. The design of the intervention allowed each teacher to choose for themselves which aspects of their practice to develop.…

This article presents a brief history of the National Science Foundation's involvement in education evaluation, reviews the program evaluations that NSF's Division of Research, Evaluation, and Communication (REC) has conducted in recent years, and describes future directions. The evaluations have reflected the field-driven nature of NSF's…

This article examines major threats to the validity of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in the context of rural schools. Although rural students and their schools made significant academic progress in the past on national and state assessments, the current goal of AYP turns out to be highly unrealistic for them unless states set far lower…

Issues facing schools abound from No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation. In science and mathematics teacher pre-service and in-service preparation, these issues are paramount for institutions of higher education, especially in terms of the definition of a "highly qualified" teacher. Within this paper, the authors discuss the science…

This 3-year longitudinal study examined how motivational tendencies, that is, task orientation and social dependence orientation, as well as cognitive-linguistic prerequisites of reading and math skills (i.e., phonological awareness, rapid naming, oral language comprehension skills, number sequence and basic arithmetic skills) measured in…

This article discusses how children learn to understand the decimal system in very concrete ways, while having fun using beads. When counting the beads, the children learn 5,491 is not simply "five thousand four hundred and ninety-one" but actually 5 thousands, 4 hundreds, 9 tens, and 1 unit. They begin to understand that as they get 10 units,…

The purpose of this study was to examine how the practicing science and mathematics teachers participating in the University of Florida's Teacher Research Update Experience (TRUE) perceived their experiences in Summer 2000. We conducted in-depth interviews and collected data from survey questionnaires and addressed research in the following areas:…

The objective of this study was to examine the nature of preservice teachers' evaluations of elementary mathematics problems using the Mathematical Tasks Framework (MTF), a model designed to discriminate among tasks according to their cognitive complexity. We also tested the relationship between mathematics content knowledge and problem length on…

In the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) era, accountability has focused almost exclusively on basic academic skills. In this article, the authors ask if the accountability system they have is producing the kind of graduates they want. They state that NCLB holds all elementary schools, regardless of student characteristics, accountable for achieving…

In this theoretical paper the informal assessment practices of two experienced teachers are used as cases for generating questions about future developments in formative assessment practice. Both teachers maintain a consistent formative assessment focus on the development of their students as enquirers, and one of them supplements this with…

In recent years, the mathematics achievement of Peruvian students has been evaluated in three national and two international studies. The results in all cases suggest very poor learning. A similar situation is found in many developing countries. In this study, we analyzed the opportunities to learn (OTL) mathematics of sixth grade students from…

In this article, the author examines the character of the conversations generated in an elementary teacher group as they worked on mathematical problems together and analyzed their students' work. Two distinct forms of talk--"exploratory" and "expository"--were found. The first type of talk occurred most prominently when discussions centered on…

The research issue in this study is how to structure collaborative learning so that it improves solving physics problems more than individual learning. Structured collaborative learning has been compared with individual learning environments with Schoenfeld's problem-solving episodes. Students took a pre-test and a post-test and had the…

This microgenetic study investigated similarities and differences in use and discovery of addition strategies in children with and without mild mental retardation across 24 sessions. Nine children with mild mental retardation in third through fifth grade classrooms and 14 children without mental retardation in kindergarten classrooms were tested…