Every month, "Leadership" features articles written in an informal, conversational style that provide practical information for school administrators. This issue of "Leadership" contains the following titles: (1) "Accountability at a Crossroads Reeves" (Douglas, B.); (2) "Becoming Proficient at Explaining the Standards: Every Teacher Should Be…

Professional development in education has recently undergone rapid change. A few years ago, most teachers did not have a voice in the types of sessions they attended or the opportunity to connect what they learned to their classrooms. Most sessions were at an awareness level only with no follow-up. All that has changed. The move toward greater…

Higher education in the UK has been through a period of major change since the mid-1980s. A massive expansion in the number of students has been coupled with a reduction in the unit of resource, increased inter-institutional competition and greater accountability. Within this demanding context, pressure has also been applied to institutions to…

Utah state Representative Margaret Dayton adored President Bush. Her conservative politics lined up with his. One of her favorite memories was being at an intimate gathering and hearing the president echo her top priorities, God, family, and country. However, Dayton had drove one of Bush's biggest education-relation headaches. Dayton led a…

With the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the proliferation of high school exit exams, the success of school choice initiatives, and a dozen other smaller if more bitter battles, education has become one of the hottest policy topics in Washington. That means there is a booming market for education experts, especially those who claim…

Between 1994 and 2002, Guinea implemented an ambitious program designed to enable teams of primary school teachers to become full partners in the mobilization of the educational system by initiating and carrying out their own professional development and school improvement projects. Known by its French acronym PPSE, this program was not originally…

Pedometers are quickly becoming a common and valuable tool for physical educators. These small devices offer a valid, reliable, and feasible method to assess children's step counts. Pedometers also provide teachers and students with immediate, concrete feedback about their physical activity levels. There are three primary uses of pedometers for…

Multiple jurisdictions engender variegated governance procedures for improving quality in the universities of Canada.

A long-standing accountability system in Tennessee is now subject to change.

Assessment for learning involves the frequent, continual use of both formal and informal classroom assessments. It can be as simple as requiring students to respond to a lesson-embedded, one-item quiz as a way of gauging student understanding of what is being taught. Ideally, this innovative approach to classroom assessment is based on a careful…

An era of high-stakes testing and accountability may be producing classroom conditions that undermine student learning. When teachers must focus their energies on preparing students for the test, they have less time to get to know students personally or make them feel valued, respected, and supported. The author reviews research showing that…

This study examines the role of corporate influence in shaping an American business school's commitment to racial and ethnic diversity. Themes emerging from an intensive case study include: (a) the centrality of corporate interest and support; (b) co-investment in "pipeline development" strategies that encourage more minorities to pursue business…

Understanding the relationship between teacher test scores and student achievement is important in an accountability environment that favors using quantitative measures of teaching quality, as is the case with Mexico's national "Carrera Magisterial" (CM) teacher incentive program. The results of this paper suggest that teacher test…

Many principals and teachers have concluded that high-stakes testing, particularly the kind of high-stakes testing which has been mandated by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, is doing grave damage to education and to the lives of children. Parents and other community members likewise worry about the consequences of schools focusing on test…

On November 3, 2005, the "Harvard Educational Review" interviewed Margaret Spellings, the eighth U.S. Secretary of Education. Spellings, who was confirmed as secretary of education on January 20, 2005, served as assistant to the president for domestic policy during George W. Bush's first term, and was responsible for the development of…