In the twenty-first century, the use of standardized tests as the primary means to evaluate schools and teachers in the United States has contributed to severe dilemmas, including misleading information on what students know, lower-level instruction, cheating, less collaboration, unfair treatment of teachers, and biased teaching. This article…

At the beginning of preschool (M = 46 months of age), 197 (94 boys) children were administered tasks that assessed a suite of nonsymbolic and symbolic quantitative competencies as well as their executive functions, verbal and nonverbal intelligence, preliteracy skills, and their parents' education level. The children's mathematics achievement was…

Despite encouraging changes in the expectations of programming for persons with moderate to severe intellectual disability (MSD), data suggest that programs for these individuals are still lacking in several critical areas. Building administrators play a key role in promoting high quality programs for students with MSD within local schools but may…

Russ Poulin is director of policy and analysis for Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications (WCET), the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) Cooperative for Educational Technologies. He has been an outspoken advocate of treating distance education fairly in state and federal regulations. In recent years, he has…

Homeschooling is controversial for a variety of reasons. One concern is whether families are sufficiently equipped to serve students with disabilities. We investigate this issue by assessing parental satisfaction with the special education services that their child is receiving in various educational sectors (e.g., homeschool, traditional public,…

On December 10, 2015, the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 (ESSA) was signed by President Barack Obama and became the United States' current national education law (United States Department of Education [U.S. DOE], n.d.). The ESSA was a long overdue reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA). Unlike previous…

This longitudinal study examined the professional perceptions of educational leaders as to the fairness and impact of teacher evaluation and compensation reforms under Race to the Top. The study surveyed graduate students in education and educational leadership programs to assess changes in their perceptions from prior to RTTT implementation…

Recently, student outcomes have bubbled to the top of debates about how to evaluate teaching in community and liberal arts colleges, universities, and professional schools, but even more international attention has been riveted on how outcomes are being used to evaluate teachers and administrators K-12 (Harris, 2012; Rowen & Raudenbush, 2016;…

Student achievement of fifth-grade students in 106 Georgia public schools in CRCT reading and mathematics was examined as a function of five characteristics of teachers and schools. The five independent variables used as predictors of CRCT scores were Title I status, teachers' education level, teachers' average years of experience, class size, and…

Children who are deafblind are one of the lowest-incidence yet most diverse groups receiving services mandated by the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act. Despite this population's diversity, the development of communication skills is critical for all children who are deafblind, and is the foundation on which good transition…

During the 2015-16 school year, 25 states used assessments aligned to college- and career-ready standards developed by consortia of states (i.e., Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers--PARCC, Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium--Smarter Balanced) as their accountability assessments. The participation of students with…

This 2015 annual report shares many of the accomplishments achieved by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools in 2015 including the celebration of their 10th anniversary. Among other achievements, the report highlights: (1) At the end of 2015 Congress and the President agreed to an $80 million increase in support for the federal Charter…

Several federal grants prioritized the role of community colleges in education and training in recent years, and one of the most substantial investments was the Trade Adjustment Act Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) program of the United States Department of Labor (DOL). Beginning October 2011, these $2 billion capacity-building…

In this critical bifocal case study, the author examines how the Obama administration's Race to the Top education reform agenda was enacted into policy that gave rise to the Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA), which was in turn embodied by a single MA English education teacher preparation program in New York State. Drawing on Weis and Fine's…

This document records testimony from a hearing held to discuss strategies for improving postsecondary access and completion for low-income and first-generation students. The hearing served as an opportunity to learn about efforts to pioneer new strategies and study the effectiveness of existing strategies so that more disadvantaged students can…