The purpose of this study was to examine the impact on program improvement of systematically gathering P-12 student learning data over a 5-year period. This study was completed over 5 academic years (2008-2009 to 2012-2013) in a teacher preparation program in northwest Oregon. Data were gathered from two student teaching experiences of teacher…

Many school leadership programs are set and delivered in specific modules or workshops in order to achieve a pre-determined set of competencies, knowledge, and skills. In addition, these programs are driven by the faculty member and the prescribed content. As Singapore schools become more complex in the roles and responsibilities to educate the…

This article presents the case of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Pakistan's former North-West Frontier Province, and its provincial educational assessment policies and practices. These policies and practices affect millions of Culturally Linguistically Diverse and Exceptional (CLDE) children who live in rural and remote areas, and areas afflicted by…

Two professors from two disciplines--education and sociology--analyzed the commonalities, differences, successes, and challenges of conducting cross-disciplinary Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) research at the course level (micro-level). This case study of their collaboration resulted in a series of lessons learned which add to the…

What do you do when you want to get your Stage 3 students authentically and enthusiastically engaged in the active construction of their understanding and fluency with measurement, data collection, representation and interpretation? How do you enable them to make choices about their learning, to measure with purpose, to record and organise the…

Stories have been one means by which qualitative researchers have attempted to engage participants and construct, analyze and present data or findings in a meaningful way. In this article, I look at the impetus for, and potentials of crafting and sharing researcher-written "factional stories" with research participants as a…

As pressure builds to assess students, teachers, and schools, educational practitioners and policy makers are increasingly looking toward student perception surveys as a promising means to collect high-quality, useful data. For instance, the widely cited Measures of Effective Teaching study lists student perception surveys as one of the three key…

This essay explores inclusive education and explains the role of United Nations for imparting it to different nations. Undoubtedly, the UN and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) strive for all children to have equitable access to education as a basic human right. The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) combined with the Convention…

This paper presents the first joint hearing of the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection, and Security Technologies of the Committee on Homeland Security and the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. The subcommittees met to examine data collection…

For decades, the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has enforced civil rights in our nation's preschool through 12th grade (P-12) and post-secondary schools, which now serve almost 80 million students annually. In Fiscal Year 2015, the OCR promoted excellence in education through conducting investigations and monitoring schools under resolution…

With many cities showing an interest in afterschool system building and research providing a growing body of useful information, this Wallace Perspective offers a digest of the latest thinking on how to build and sustain an afterschool system, and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for this promising work. The report (a follow-up to a…

As state and local education agencies increasingly focus on serving educators with their data systems, a common challenge has arisen: identifying the critical knowledge, skills, and behaviors needed by teachers and administrators to use data effectively. Many states are creating data literacy and data use training programs for pre- and in-service…

This report describes in detail how researchers, policymakers, and program administrators can recognize opportunities for experiments and carry them out. Specifically, the report focuses on opportunistic experiments, defined as randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that study the effects of initiatives, program changes, or policy actions that…

The challenges facing our children in the 21st century are rapidly changing. As a result, schools bear a greater responsibility to prepare students for college, career, and life and must be held accountable for more than just testing and reporting on a narrow set of outcomes aimed at minimum levels of competency. Thus, scholars, educators, and…

We report on the implementation experience of carrying out data collection and other activities for a public health evaluation study on whether U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) investment improved utilization of health services and health system strengthening in Uganda. The retrospective study period focused on the PEPFAR…