Stonington High School in Pawcatuck, Connecticut, adopted an alternating day (A/B) block schedule in 1998. The shift in schedule has resulted in less movement throughout the building and fewer instances of disruptive behaviors. In addition, the initiatives that Stonington has been able to implement have caused the daily attendance rate to increase…

Back in the early 1990s, three Manitoba School districts launched the "Lost Prizes" project to reclaim talented, at-risk high-school dropouts. Despite their unique gifts, these relationship-resistant youth were disenchanted, disillusioned, and disconnected. Many had major substance abuse problems and were engaged in serious criminal…

In this article we examine how social capital affects the creation of human capital. Specifically, we study how college students' peers affect academic performance. Building on existing research, we consider the different types of peers in the academic context and the various mechanisms through which peers affect performance. We test our model…

The College and Career Readiness Standards, referred to as the Common Core Learning Standards (CCLS) in New York City, are increasingly the focus of educational reform efforts across the United States. Each year for the past several years, the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) has created a set of focusing expectations for schools in…

In response to the mandates of No Child Left Behind, (NCLB), educators across the country struggle to close the gaps between males and females. Some of the physiological differences existing between the male and female brain suggest support for single-gender instruction, which is on the rise within this country as well as other parts of the world.…

In conjunction with the Denver Plan instituted in 2005, Denver Public Schools (DPS) has embarked upon a consistent strategy of opening new schools in an effort to improve overall academic performance. DPS has pursued this strategy under several different paths: an annual request for proposals from charter school applicants; allowing current…

In response to the diverse requirements of 21st-century police work and the increasing emphasis on community-policing philosophy, the Los Angeles Police Department has implemented changes within its academy curricula and methods of instruction, including the use of adult-learning concepts, a community policing problem-solving model known as…

The participation and performance of students in statewide accountability and assessment systems are measures of student and school success. These accountability systems theoretically reflect performance for all students, including students receiving special education. Yet few examine the participation and performance of students in special…

This article examines the reading of leveled books and the assessment of students' reading levels in a public school classroom. The purpose of the research study was to examine how these processes of assessment, which often go unnoticed, shaped the ways reading and readers were defined. The research was located in a third grade, public school…

Students with moderate intellectual disability experience a lack of comparable access to literature as compared to their nondisabled peers (Browder et al., 2009; Kliewer, 1998). Problems in access for many of these students may be attributed to low expectations and inadequate support on behalf of students as well as a lack of sufficient literacy…

This article is concerned pragmatically with how recent research findings in assessment for learning (AfL) can bring about higher quality learning in the day-to-day classroom. The first half of this paper reviews recent studies within Black and Wiliam's (2009) framework of formative assessment and looks for insights on how pedagogical procedures…

Graduates from three Northern California private universities K-12 teacher preparation programs were invited to participate in an online survey to share their perceptions of the California Teaching Performance Assessment (CalTPA) as it influenced their K-12 beginning teacher practice. Self-selected respondents further volunteered to discuss their…

No Child Left Behind's mandate to close the achievement gap for students with disabilities and the emergence of response to intervention (RTI) as a means to address students' learning needs have led many schools to use more preventive academic supports within the general education classroom. The use of a diagnostic, intervention-based approach to…

Despite three decades of advances in information and communications technology (ICT) and a generation of research on cognition and new pedagogical strategies, the field of assessment has not progressed much beyond paper-and-pencil item-based tests. Research has shown these instruments are not valid measures of sophisticated intellectual…

This paper reports on a three-year study conducted in Western Australia, which commenced in January 2008, and was completed by December 2010. It concerns the potential to use digital technologies to represent the output from assessment tasks in two senior secondary courses: Engineering Studies and Physical Education Studies. The general aim of…