School desegregation court cases provided the impetus to early experimental efforts at government takeover of public schools. Most recently, states have taken over school districts for failure to demonstrate adequate academic progress (educational bankruptcy). North Carolina's ABC program is profiled. Legal, financial, and organizational…

Addresses the challenges faced in developing a task-based language assessment instrument for adult immigrants in Canada that is accountable to the needs of diverse groups of stakeholders, including learners, teachers, and administrators. The test, the Canadian Language Benchmarks Assessment (CLBA), is designed to place adult newcomers in language…

U.S. high-school students' enrollment in arts classes is at an 18-year peak. In 1998, 52.7 percent of high-school graduates earned credits in visual arts classes, compared with 44 percent in 1982. For various reasons, technology course enrollments have not kept pace with society's technological transformation. (MLH)

When they are well-devised and implemented, academic standards, tests, and associated accountability provisions can change the nature of teaching and learning. They can lead to a richer, more challenging curriculum, foster teacher collaboration, create a more productive teacher/parent dialogue, and focus attention on student achievement. (MLH)

A comprehensive paradigm for the provision of career development services to a K-12 school population including those with special needs is presented in an easily understood format. This service delivery "tool" is intended to help teachers and administrators both acknowledge the career development services that they are currently…

Throughout the 1990s, the New Zealand education system was transformed by neo-liberal policies that promoted marketisation, school self-management, local governance and strong centralised forms of control and accountability. The election of a Labour-led "third way" government in 1999 has not only witnessed a continuation of the central…

A novel Web-based Accountability Model (WAM) for assessment and learning in a Teacher Education Program was implemented. The objective is to explain the rationale for the WAM model, how it was implemented as the web-based Education Accountability System (EAS), and the impacts on the organization and the individual. Standards were followed in the…

In this article, the author analyzes and summarizes geographic education in Louisiana from a historical perspective with a specific emphasis on the degree to which geography was implemented into the state's standards. To accomplish that, he draws from the following three sources of information: active and retired social studies teachers from a…

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, the 2001 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, has become a symbol of all things good and bad in education. While the basic concepts of the legislation--accountability for results, research-based education programs, increased parental options, and expanded local control and…

Collaboration as a cornerstone of effective school inclusion is an idea that has high theoretical currency among many scholars in the areas of special education and educational leadership. The challenge for educational practitioners is to find ways to implement high-quality special education programs collaboratively amid the public call for school…

Administrative data from North Carolina are used to explore the extent to which that state's relatively sophisticated school-based accountability system has exacerbated the challenges that schools serving low-performing students face in retaining and attracting high-quality teachers. Most clear are the adverse effects on retention rates, and hence…

In her most noteworthy policy speech since taking office in January, U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings outlined how she would give states new flexibility to implement the 3-year-old law. The Department of Education will entertain proposals from states to waive rules under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The department also will…

Politicians, less interested in purity than in popularity, are generally wary of national standards. Yet a standards-based accountability system is the core component of NCLB, and in some ways it has made standards advocates victims of their own success. Now, many activists are agitating to cut back the role of Washington in education, and a…

Ensuring appropriate educational opportunities for students with disabilities is one of the greatest challenges that public schools face. Research suggests that few school leaders are prepared to provide effective special education leadership (Monteith, 2000; Walther-Thomas, DiPaola, & Butler, 2002). If school reform goals are to be realized,…

Accreditation bodies increasingly force institutions to merge their accountability reporting, institutional research, outcomes assessment, and decision-making activities, thus serving as catalysts for enhancing institutional effectiveness. (Contains 3 figures.)