Many of the policies that fall under the school accountability umbrella are designed to incentivize students. Prominent among these are high school exit exams, standardized tests that, in some states, students must pass to earn a high school diploma. Proponents of these tests argue that by incentivizing students, they induce them to work harder…

This paper explores the development of children's centres in England between 2004 and 2008, focusing on the newly created centres that have been located on primary and nursery school sites. Using both an analysis of policy documents and interview data from three urban local authorities, we examine the use of premises and the differing priorities…

This paper is based on case-study research in four English secondary schools. It explores the pressure placed on English and mathematics departments because of their results being reported in annual performance tables. It examines how English and maths departments enact policies of achievement, the additional power and extra resources the pressure…

This article ethnographically examines the ways in which No Child Left Behind (NCLB) links local practices to the centralized processing of data through its narrowing of procedures and measurements aimed at accountability. Framed by actor-network theory, it draws upon data consistently collected between June 2005 and October 2008, and then…

Last May, the seven most recent New York State Teacher of the Year award winners joined the 1993 recipient in sounding the alarm bell over the state's new plan to stake 40 percent of teachers' performance evaluations on students' standardized test scores. In their letter to Chancellor Merryl Tisch and the state Board of Regents, the teachers said…

This study explored elementary school counselors' perceptions of importance and implementation for state standards in support of academic achievement. Results indicate that Academic and Personal/Social standards are important to achievement with no statistical difference between the standards. Further, counselors implement Personal/Social…

The confidentiality of a patient's information has been sacred since the days of Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine. Today, however, merely taking an oath to respect a patient's privacy has been overshadowed by regulations governing how certain healthcare establishments handle an individual's health information on the web. Consequently, if a…

Glenn Smith, APPA's Vice President for Professional Development, had the honor of introducing the closing panel discussion at APPA's annual conference in Boston last July--a discussion centered on the theme "Inventing Our Future." Previous general plenary sessions and related breakout sessions had explored the challenges people face in these…

This paper uses one national case to illustrate how diverse ideological agendas of central state agencies contest the discursive space within which major education policy reforms are developed. In Aotearoa New Zealand in 1988, "self-managed" schools were promoted ostensibly to allow parents more say in their children's education and…

Students with disabilities participate in two major measurement systems. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act emphasizes working within a Response to Intervention (RTI) framework to identify and monitor the progress of low-performing students. Persistent low-performing students also may be eligible for some form of an alternate…

Medical education is not exempt from the increasing societal expectations of accountability and this is evidenced by an increasing number of litigation cases by students who are dissatisfied with their assessment. The time and monetary costs of student appeals makes it imperative that medical schools adopt robust quality assured assessment…

In today's diverse classrooms and age of accountability, teachers need to use efficient, research-based instructional approaches that engage all students, promote interest and variety in learning and teaching, and provide immediate and continuous informal assessment data. This article presents a rationale for using active involvement techniques,…

The "Carpe Vitam: Leadership for Learning" project set out with an ambitious agenda to look cross-nationally at the constructs and practice of leadership and learning in schools. The greatest challenge, then, was describing how those two aspects of life in school connect and influence each other. It was an aim of the project to create a…

This article presents a review of four chapters in "Part I, Section A: Making Curriculum" of "The SAGE Handbook of Curriculum and Instruction" (F. M. Connelly, M. F. He, J. I. Phillion, Eds.; Sage Publications, 2008). These chapters ["Curriculum Policy and the Politics of What Should Be Learned in Schools" (Benjamin…

In 2006, the former Education Secretary Margaret Spellings' Commission on the Future of Higher Education released a final report on the status of American higher education. The commission painted a critical picture of American higher education as being unconcerned about escalating costs, arrogant, and unwilling to change. University sectors…