More high school students today are graduating college-ready, career-ready or both, thanks to an emphasis by modern business and industry, strong support from states and more rigorous learning experiences at schools across the nation. It has been said many times, but now it is sinking in. From hospitals to factories, employees need to know how to…

Gunther, McGowan and Donegan draw on their own experiences and those of others in the field, to explain the importance of communication in school leadership. In focusing on the communication process--why it's critical for schools, and how it can be executed well--they make the case that communication must be a primary emphasis for leaders, not an…

"Becoming an Engaged Campus" offers campus leaders a systematic and detailed approach to creating an environment where public engagement can grow and flourish. The book explains not only what to do to expand community engagement and how to do it, but it also explores how to document, evaluate, and communicate university engagement efforts. An…

The growing need for more information about measuring teachers' contributions to student learning growth, particularly in nontested subjects and grades, is the impetus for this Research & Policy Brief. Although the research base in this area is disappointingly limited, the brief includes considerations and suggestions based on current models…

Middle grades schools have their hands full in working with elementary schools and high schools to improve the likelihood of success for middle grades students--accelerating learning, helping elementary students move seamlessly into the middle grades, preparing middle grades students for rigorous high school courses, changing organization and…

The U.S. Department of Education (ED) has presented state leaders with an enormous opportunity. ED's offer of flexibility under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) gives leaders the chance to align critical systems--standards, assessments, school accountability, and educator evaluation--with raised expectations for all students. And,…

This article traces and analyses some of the key features of 14-19 education and training in England over the 30 years since such a phase was first mooted. It does this through an introductory narrative outlining the key policies and initiatives and the development of six themes drawing on analysis of a body of research and policy. The themes are:…

The purpose of this article is to discuss the value of "Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership" ("JCEL") in teaching the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) standards. In this article, the authors discuss the process of how a department of educational leadership developed an appreciation for the journal by aligning…

The number of studies conducted on college-student attrition is overwhelming. But few examine the impact of adding an early-intervention assessment tool to existing retention programs. Too often, colleges and universities conduct initiatives with similar purposes as disconnected efforts; retention programs in particular can benefit from a more…

Studies illustrate that achievement gaps between poor and non-poor children already exist at kindergarten (Lee & Burkham, 2002). The larger the gap at the time children enter school, the harder it is to close the gap. This article reviews a case study of one Midwest school district and their attempt at reducing the achievement gap through the…

We discuss the design, creation and implementation of an instructional game for use in a high school poetry class following a commitment to an educational game design principle of "alignment". We studied groups of instructional designers and an interactive fiction computer game they built. The game was implemented in a 9th grade English classroom…

Spatial, social and academic journeys undertaken between Taiwan and Australia for doctoral education are the focus of reflection here. The discussion centres on the authors' experiences of, on the one hand, the development of a Faculty of Education's doctoral pedagogies in the early 2000s to reflect its international PhD candidature…

Understandings of young children as active and capable citizens, while evident in discourses of early childhood education and research, are not widely reflected in the policy for the early years of schooling in Australia. This paper makes an analysis of the gaps and tensions between discourses of young children as active citizens and policy for…

Using critical policy analysis, this study considers state policies that impede technical credit transfer from public 2-year colleges to 4-year institutions of higher education. The states of Ohio, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin are considered, and seven policy benchmarks for facilitating the transfer of technical credits are proposed. (Contains…

This report describes a project conducted to determine the areas of research required to support Christian schools as they carry out their task in a changing world. The project was carried out through an email survey and phone interviews of leaders of schools associated with two Christian school organizations--the Association of Christian Schools…