The "IDRA Newsletter" serves as a vehicle for communication with educators, school board members, decision-makers, parents, and the general public concerning the educational needs of all children across the United States. The focus of this issue is "Education Policy." Contents include: (1) Texas Legislature Concentrates on…

Throughout every region of North Carolina, leaders of organizations in all fields -- business, education, government, community, faith-based, and others -- agree that the future prosperity and well-being of the state's citizens requires successfully educating all of its children. That means effectively supporting children of every race and…

Focused on educational quality, innovation and opportunity--both within and outside of the traditional system--ExcelinEd advances a broad range of student-centered policy solutions that are successfully: (1) increasing student learning; (2) Readying graduates for college and career; and (3) Advancing equity. This year's annual report highlights…

The Adult Education--Basic Grants to States program authorized under the "Adult Education and Family Literacy Act of 1998" (AEFLA), enacted as "Title II" of the "Workforce Investment Act of 1998" (WIA) (P.L. 105-220), was the major source of federal support for adult basic education (ABE) and literacy education…

High rates of attrition make it challenging for schools to provide qualified special education teachers for students with disabilities, especially given chronic teacher shortages. We synthesize 30 studies from 2002 to 2017, examining factors associated with special educator attrition and retention, including (a) teacher preparation and…

Four decades on from the Year of the Student, when university campuses were sites of protest and dissent, it is crucial to consider how the involvement of university academics in activist causes has changed. Using social movement frameworks this article examines how organisational, political and cultural contexts have hindered social and political…

Background/Context: Recent U.S. policy has brought a shift in assessment use, from measurement tools to policy levers. In particular, testing has become a core part of teacher evaluation policies in many states, with test results becoming akin to a job evaluation. Purpose: To explore the notion of consequential validity in assessment use and…

In this paper, we draw attention to the impact of neoliberal globalisation in rearticulating conceptions of equity within the Ontario context. The Ontario education system has been hailed for its top performance on Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) as a high-equity/high-quality education system and created "PISA envy"…

Pro-market and business approaches to management in the public sector (new public management--NPM) have created an audit culture in schools driven by top-down, high stakes accountability, and the fetishization of data. Within this context, authentic, qualitative, and democratic forms of inquiry, both in universities and schools, become easily…

Moderation is a quality assurance process that plays a central role in the teaching, learning, and assessment cycle in higher education. While there is a growing body of research globally on teaching, learning, and, to a lesser degree, assessment in higher education, the process of moderation of assessment has received even less attention. In a…

This study investigates how the role of the reading specialist (RS) is defined and communicated by principals, and examines to what degree a common understanding of this role exists among teachers, building administrators and reading specialists. The principal's responsibility in defining and communicating role, and the effect these efforts have…

For the past decade, the accountability model associated with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) emphasized proficiency on end of year tests; with Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) the emphasis on proficiency within statewide testing programs, though now integrated with other measures of student learning, nevertheless remains a primary metric for…

In this article, I aim to analyze the perceptions regarding excellence shared by students of high-performing public schools in Santiago de Chile and simultaneously to reflect on the way in which they experience it, inside and outside of school. Through the analysis of 24 focus groups conducted in six schools, I conclude that students share…

Previous large-scale education technology interventions have shown only modest impacts on student achievement. Building on results from an earlier randomized controlled trial of three different applications of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on primary education in Kenya, the Tusome Early Grade Reading Activity developed the…

The charter school model differs fundamentally from the district-based model of public education delivery that is still dominant in every state. Instead of creating government bodies that directly operate all of an area's public schools, the state approves entities that authorize and oversee schools run by nonprofit organizations. In this article,…