With the growth of online courses available for K-12 education, administrators should consider the following advice before implementing them in their schools: Plan carefully; think education, not technology; cooperate, do not compete; figure out the money. Includes a list of print and online reference materials on K-12 online education. (PKP)

A Web site can be the unifying force among schools with in a district. Many approaches work. Anyone who examines a few school district Web sites will appreciate the variation in content and design each provides. For example, Des Moines Iowa Public Schools, a district in which many in the community speak a second language, provides Web content in…

Increasingly, teachers rely on computer software and networks to both enhance curriculum management and provide engaging learning opportunities in instruction. New software is enabling more frequent formative assessments to better focus day-to-day lessons on the unique needs of individual learners. Administrators use increasingly complex data…

Being a Family and Consumer Sciences (FCS) professional in today's multiple environments is a challenge, mainly because the environments are always changing. The familial, social, economic, political, cultural, legal, ecological, and technological environments are continually in flux. The feature that is shaping all of these environs--both from…

In this article, the author questions the validity of an educational accountability system (i.e., the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001) that stresses only 'high stakes assessments" for all children. He maintains that state and national educational reformers have based their argument on an invalid assessment of student achievement in America,…

Among the criticisms often made of high-stakes assessments in the United States is that they promote "teaching to the test." There is little question that, under pressure to produce higher test scores, schools tend to implement more standardized curriculums that are geared toward preparing students to perform well on year-end tests.…

In recent years, governments worldwide have increased their use of standardized tests and other forms of external tests to measure and report on student achievement in selected academic subjects. That trend, responding to public pressure on decision-makers to make school systems more transparent and accountable, is often colored by criticisms of…

Two studies examined whether social norms and children's concern for self-presentation affect their intergroup attitudes. Study 1 examined racial intergroup attitudes and normative beliefs among children aged 6 to 16 years (n=155). Accountability (i.e., public self-focus) was experimentally manipulated, and intergroup attitudes were assessed using…

In this article, the author argues, that with NCLB behind us, IDEA reauthorization in front of us and NAEP report cards and state standards on either side, American education finds itself in the center of an unprecedented confluence of state and federal mandates calling for higher performance accountabilities. The result is an educational analog…

The Victorian Age was a period of great confusion, of great hope and great despair, of a bourgeois assault upon the aristocracy, of an evangelical assault upon the establishment, of the raised voices of the Wesleyans in the Welsh valleys. In Australia, of course it was the threat of the Yellow Peril and of Russian invasion as well as the emerging…

The attempt to reform education using performance-based accountability may eventually be applied to teacher education. If so, it poses a potential challenge to those in social foundations as well as to other teacher-educators. Among other things, it requires that we think clearly about our mission and the kinds of effects we would like to have.…

Steering higher education through the establishment of a "contract" between the state and the individual higher education institution is becoming an increasingly popular way of regulating the relationship between the two actors in the Nordic countries. This article addresses some theoretical foundations for this approach derived from…

In the past decade employers, market and private sector influences have had a marked impact on vocational education and training (VET) policy. This article critically examines the effect of such impact on the relationship between employers, state and education in England. It is argued that largely unfettered de-regulation practices have gifted…

When the US' governors gather in Washington this February 2005 for what is billed as a national education summit on high schools, many will come prepared to talk about initiatives already under way back home. The summit's organizers hope that an "action agenda"--coupled with intensive planning leading up to the meeting--will encourage state…

This article reports on the increasing attempts to identify what have been dubbed high-flying schools and figure out what makes them tick to bring all students to higher levels of achievement. A free Web site, launched by the New York City-based Standard & Poor's, began providing a tool that enables users to identify schools that do better…