From the outset, President Obama placed teacher quality at the center of his Education Plan. The president and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have focused on teacher evaluation as the means of securing the best teachers for American students. This is evident from the push to use student achievement data in teacher evaluation in Race to the Top…

As the demand for online learning environments grow in higher education, so does the need for systematic application of learning and educational theory to the design, development and delivery of assessment strategies within these environments. However, there is little guidance in the form of principled design frameworks that can assist the design…

Although most people in the United States believe, at least theoretically, in educational equality, fewer and fewer appear to care about the resource gaps between affluent and poor schools, says Weissbourd. He illustrates these gaps with vivid descriptions of what he calls an "opulence arms race" among affluent independent schools, but…

In this article, the authors introduce engineering and technology teachers to the process that led to the National Research Council's framework for K-12 science education and some of its content and delve into the dimensions of the framework that should be of most interest to engineering and technology teachers. The framework articulates a vision…

Both the 1996 Interstate School Leadership Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) standards and the 2002 Educational Leadership Constituent Council (ELCC) standards, adopted by preparation programs nationwide have a strong emphasis on democratic ideals. By aligning their programs with these standards education administration faculty have taken a step in the…

The purpose of the authors in this review is to examine how teacher-related, context-related, and project-related conditions interact in successful cases of technology integration projects in social studies classrooms. A close examination of different dimensions of these conditions in the implementation of 33 successful cases of…

The National Career Development Strategy Green Paper is a discussion paper issued by the Department of Employment, Education and Workplace Relations. It is aimed at the formulation of a coherent and structured career development strategy throughout Australia. The Green Paper seeks to lay the foundation for policy change through establishing the…

This chapter introduces the concept of benchmarking and how higher education institutions began to use benchmarking for a variety of purposes. Here, benchmarking is defined as a strategic and structured approach whereby an organization compares aspects of its processes and/or outcomes to those of another organization or set of organizations to…

The International Leadership Association's (ILA) Guiding Questions (2009) identify context as the foundational framework from which educators build successful leadership programs. Echoing sentiments from W. K. Kellogg's landmark study "Leadership in the Making" (Zimmerman-Oster and Burkhardt, 1999), context matters. Context includes tangible and…

Educational leadership preparation programs are expected to train graduates who change their practice and produce outcomes for teachers and students. However, programs are challenged to produce evidence of their impact while also evaluating for formative purposes. This paper describes collaboration between an educational leadership program…

The members of the Large Countywide and Suburban District Consortium--a group of large, highly diverse, and successful districts across the country--have made great strides in achieving college and career readiness for all students. While they are succeeding, the consortium proposes that more could be done to accomplish their objectives through…

While many states mandate some type of sexuality education in schools, state legislation varies widely across the United States. Nevertheless, though much has been written about the behavioral outcomes of sexuality education programs shown to be effective at reducing one or more risky sexual behaviors in teenagers, less is known about the exact…

This paper reports on an action research study investigating the use of online learning activities or "e-tivities" to enhance the learning and assessment experience of students on a distance master's programme. The study suggests that to be successfully integrated in a programme, such activities need to be carefully aligned with learning…

To serve students and society well, higher education needs to make a pervasive commitment to equity and inclusive excellence--both preparing students for and providing them with access to high-quality learning opportunities, and ensuring that students of color and low-income students participate in the most empowering forms of college learning.…

The purpose of this study was to examine and compare key elements of the actions that states in the USA and Australia took to implement the Common Core State Standards or Phase One of the Australian Curriculum, and what processes and products they used to facilitate implementation of these innovations. A rubric adapted from a diagnostic tool,…