This article is a case study of a highly effective school leader in an urban city in Connecticut who has created a successful learning community. Through a one-year study, which involved interviews and observations on a regular basis, the author ascertained the leadership practices and patterns of this leader that have led to a successful learning…

Parental involvement is mentioned more than one hundred times in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). In this article, John Rogers argues that President Bush and former U.S. secretary of education Rod Paige have promoted policy narratives of test accountability, choice, and parental involvement that describe how poor parents can spur educators to…

This article uses the Kentucky portfolio assessment to illustrate ways a sophisticated writing requirement can stimulate statewide professional development and school change. Though the authors question the accountability function of the assessment, they applaud the broad and deep professional development movement that has resulted because of it.…

In this article, the author first reviews a range of concerns about middle schooling in America, most of which are shown to have salience in Australia, to provide a context for a more detailed examination of integrated curriculum as a significant issue in contemporary middle schooling. Two examples of integrated curriculum in the Australian…

Special education enrollments, and consequently overall costs, continue to rise with no apparent relief in sight. To clarify the fiscal challenges con fronting local special education administrators today, this article provides background on how special education is funded in the United States and discusses trends in special education enrollments…

Research has shown that individuals who become teachers are uniquely oriented to the psychic rewards of teaching such as connecting with students and making a difference. Yet, in the era of "No Child Left Behind", emphasis upon test scores as indicators of student learning, competition within and between school districts, and threats of…

The limits of government accountability in the field of education and improvement of educational facilities are discussed.

This article reports on the central recommendation of the federal task force for a way to better handle dropout and graduation rates. Made up of 10 academics and government statisticians, the panel comprising the Task Force on Graduation, Completion, and Dropout Indicators was formed in the fall of 2003 to advise the U.S. Department of Education's…

This paper discusses the importance of evaluating state assessment data in order to improve learning. The Glens Falls City School District in upstate New York began in-depth analyses of state assessment data and Terra Nova scores over the last three years. Teachers and administrators work together in a new way to highlight strengths and weaknesses…

Although afterschool programs for children have been operating for many years in some communities, the afterschool movement--the great national awakening to the opportunity afterschool offers--is just a few years old. As public demand for afterschool has grown, so has the demand for accountability. That is particularly true in afterschool…

Each year, states spend collectively more than $70 billion to support higher education, but governors and the public do not have accessible, useful information about what students learn as a result of their time in college. Without reliable information about postsecondary learning outcomes, policymakers can not determine which investments or…

This book seeks to raise the discussion of globalisation's effects on teacher education, development and work, and its reforms and institutions, to a more theoretical and analytical level, and to provide specific examples in the comparative tradition to illustrate teacher policy in the context of education systems' widespread variability and…

While numerous recent authors have studied the effects of school accountability systems on student test performance and school "gaming" of accountability incentives, there has been little attention paid to substantive changes in instructional policies and practices resulting from school accountability. The lack of research is primarily…

Linking teacher practice to pupil outcomes has proven challenging for teacher educators. Methodological problems occur when linking individual teacher actions with subsequent pupil performance, including substantial intervening variables, questions about appropriate measures of student learning, issues regarding the lack of test standardization…

This book examines how the structure of schools might be changed so that students in their formative years are able to learn in a manner that allows them to be more creative. The modern world is shrinking as technology and connectivity create new ways to live, communicate, and do business. Education and learning must follow suit. The author…