Legislative amendments contained in the most recent reauthorization of IDEA and NCLB have mandated that all students, including those with special needs, be taught by an appropriately certified teacher. Specifically, both of these laws require that teachers of special education students in core academic classes must meet state special education…

This paper reports an examination on gender differences in lunar phases understanding of 123 students (70 females and 53 males). Middle-level students interacted with the Moon through observations, sketching, journalling, two-dimensional and three-dimensional modelling, and classroom discussions. These lunar lessons were adapted from the Realistic…

In this article, the author describes how middle schools can prepare young people for the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. Integrating 21st century skills deliberately and systematically into middle school education will empower educators to accomplish many of the elusive goals they have tried to reach for years. Twenty-first…

This pilot study documents the design and evaluation results of an innovative teaching approach with the use of ICT regarding the optics concepts of light reflection and diffusion, and vision in Greek primary school. First there was a survey of 140 students to ascertain their initial ideas regarding these concepts. On the basis of the results of…

The purpose of this study was to reconstruct writers' reasoning process as reflected in their written texts. The codes resulting from the text analysis were related to cognitive operations, ranging from simple to more sophisticated ones. The sequence of the cognitive operations as the text unfolded represents the writer's cognitive pathway at the…

Primary school data from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) are analyzed in this article to examine performance difference between 3rd and 4th grades. Score comparisons are determined across all TIMSS items in each of the participating countries, using computer technology and programming to complete the thousands of…

Supports the use of assessment probes to measure scientific achievement. Provides several examples and discusses the characteristics of effective probes. (DDR)

Analyzed the mathematics achievement of immigrant children in the United States, Canada, England, Australia, and New Zealand using data from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study. Immigrant students' mathematics achievement was lower than others only in England, the United States, and Canada. Non-English language background was…

On an overcast Sunday afternoon April 2005, a crowd of teenagers and their families file through the front gates of Great America theme park, located along a boulevard in the polished suburban circuitry of Silicon Valley. Emerging briskly from this migration of bodies onto the steps of the park auditorium, flanked by his mother and father, is a…

The East Asian countries are known for their high scores on international comparisons of math and science achievement. This does not necessarily mean that the U.S. should rush to adopt their practices and abandon its own strengths. Yong Zhao examines education reforms in math and science from an international perspective and discusses implications…

The purpose of the present study was to improve a multivariate multilevel model in the research literature which estimates the consistency in the rates of growth between mathematics and science achievement among students and schools. We introduced a new multivariate multilevel model via a latent variable approach. Data from the Longitudinal Study…

This article considers the problem of educational placement. Several discriminant techniques are applied to a data set from a survey project of science ability. A profile vector for each student consists of five science-educational indicators. The students are intended to be placed into three reference groups: advanced, regular, and remedial.…

This paper presents the 2008 Maryland School Performance Report. It shows the academic performance results of the State and its 24 school systems. This report includes the results from the Maryland School Assessment (MSA) given in spring 2008, information about the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) measures required by the federal No Child Left…

The Implementing Standards-Based Accountability (ISBA) study was designed to examine the strategies that states, districts, and schools are using to implement standards-based accountability under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and how these strategies are associated with classroom practices and student achievement in mathematics and science.…

In recent years a number of reports have raised alarm over the deteriorating state of U.S. science and technology (S&T) competitiveness. But a recent report by the RAND Corporation, "U.S. Competitiveness in Science and Technology," argues that the U.S. continues to lead the world. RAND's report has been interpreted to suggest that the "clarion…