This article discusses how colleges and universities are taking drastic measure for difficult times. Hit hard by the global financial crisis, colleges are cutting their budgets in ways that prompt fears about access and retention for minority students. Schools are considering layoffs, unpaid furloughs for faculty and staff, hiring freezes and…

A response to the precarious state of the public education system in South Africa, the Education Roadmap and its 10 Point Programme is a multi-layered policy intervention intended to galvanise educational policymakers and practitioners into action, get schools the support they need, get teachers teaching and learners learning, and ultimately…

The internationalist frame of critical pedagogy has drawn primarily from the standpoint of Latin American struggle. Unfortunately, the policies of military repression, forced disappearances, and widespread impoverishment in Latin America has been recreated in the present tense--Philippine-style. In my paper, I provide a brief overview of the…

A host of real and perceived chasms divide students who achieve high academic standards and those who fail to meet them: varying expectations, economic status, resources, cultural and racial preconceptions, inappropriate standards, and so on. Yet as with all human endeavors throughout history, inventors, innovators, and risk takers rise to the…

If some schools can overcome the powerful and pervasive effects of poverty to become high performing, shouldn't any school be able to do the same? Shouldn't we be compelled to learn from those schools? Although schools alone will never systemically eliminate poverty, high-poverty, high-performing (HP/HP) schools take control of what they can to…

Schools that give students access to STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) studies are accomplishing several objectives: introducing students to higher-level academic and career studies, expanding project-based learning in the curriculum, enticing students to remain in school until graduation, and preparing students for…

The purpose of this study was to examine the attitudes of elementary school physical education teachers towards teaching character education related to the variables respect, honesty, fairness and self-discipline and to examine their attitudes towards the character development of their fourth and/or fifth grade students related to the variables…

Over the last decade, policy and business leaders have come to know what parents have always known: teachers make the greatest difference to student achievement. With new statistical and analytical methods used by a wide range of researchers, evidence has been mounting that teacher quality can account for a large share of variance in student test…

The use of effective instructional strategies is clearly emphasized in current educational reform, especially in the area of reading. The purposes of this study were to investigate the rates at which specific instructional practices (i.e., attention signals, prior knowledge supports, previews, instructor modeling, student modeling, organizational…

Many urban districts in the United States have difficulty attracting and retaining quality teachers, yet they are often the most in need of them. In response, U.S. states and districts are experimenting with financial incentives to attract and retain high-quality teachers in high-need, low-achieving, or hard-to-staff urban schools. However,…

Children's gardening programs have enjoyed increasing popularity in recent years. An Australian environmental education non-profit organization implemented a program, entitled Multicultural Schools Gardens, in disadvantaged (low-income) schools that used food gardening as a focus for implementing a culturally-focused environmental education…

Title I schools that want desperately to raise student scores on high-stakes tests often have found it hard to resist the lure of scripted literacy programs, especially in the face of pressure from No Child Left Behind to raise test scores. In recent years, many high-poverty elementary schools have adopted such programs in spite of evidence about…

Purpose: This paper seeks to describe the design, implementation, and lessons learned from an obesity prevention pilot program delivered in a low resource school in the USA. Design/methodology/approach: A planned program evaluation was conducted to: document explicitly the process of designing and implementing the program; and assess the…

This Research Brief focuses on the qualifications of teachers in science and mathematics as well as history, in grades 7-12 for the 2003-04 school year. The subjects of science and mathematics were selected because of continuing concerns in the United States over the high need for individuals with advanced knowledge and skills in these subjects.…

There are estimated 1.5 million Black men in prison and another 3.5 million on probation. Black males make up more than 70 percent of the total prison population, even though they make up only 6 percent of the U.S. Population. The alarming incarceration rates of Black men is not a new phenomenon, but one that has reverberated in news headlines and…