"Harvard Education Letter" is published bimonthly at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. This issue of "Harvard Education Letter" contains the following articles: (1) Talking 'bout Evolution: High School Science Teachers Share Strategies for Dealing with Controversy in the Classroom (Nancy Walser); (2) Standards-Based…

Students' brains are wired to make them natural, curious learners. The mathematical world around them offers a vast classroom, filled with shapes, spaces, quantities, and experiences to discover and explore, all leading to the construction of understanding. Teachers can use this natural curiosity to tap the inborn neural mechanisms that motivate…

Over the past 15 years, charter schools and teachers unions have battled in state legislatures, the courts and the media. But with increasing frequency, the two groups are facing each other in the everyday operation of schools. This report summarizes the opinions expressed at a meeting of local state, and national leaders from both the charter…

This document reflects Federal Student Aid's solid progress in meeting strategic objectives since becoming a Performance-Based Organization. Specifically, the plan addresses continuing efforts to increase program integrity, improve customer service and achieve measurable results in the management and administration of the Title IV student…

The Title I program, created in 1965, is the largest federal program supporting elementary and secondary education and is intended to help ensure that all children have the opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and reach proficiency on challenging state standards and assessments. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) expanded the…

Today, policymakers with an interest in school success no longer debate why states should provide pre-kindergarten; that case has been made successfully to voters, educators, and researchers. Instead, policymakers now wrestle with how to get the job done. Increasingly, they turn to what those in the pre-k field call "diverse" or…

The basics of No Child Left Behind (NCLB)--adequate yearly progress benchmarks, provision of supplemental services, and a "highly qualified" teacher in every classroom--are known. The intense scrutiny of the "how to" of those basics has resulted in a mix of impassioned criticism and effusive praise. What has been left largely…

This study examines six teachers' responses inside and outside of their classrooms to increasingly mixed messages about how they should develop the literacy of California's youngest and most at-risk students. While they must develop highly developed knowledge and skills to teach literacy in linguistically diverse classrooms, they must also adhere…

The issue of physical punishment is a particularly controversial one at the moment as child advocates are engaged in a struggle to persuade the New Zealand government to repeal a defence in law (section 59 of the 1961 "Crimes Act") which justifies parents hitting their children provided the force used is "reasonable in the…

Having a child with autism can severely disrupt family life. Parents may experience emotional stress, anxiety, fear, and guilt. Understanding parental efforts in learning about autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and their experiences with a variety of therapeutic interventions and educational strategies is an important component of building…

Principals are increasingly held accountable for student achievement. Why shouldn't schools, like other institutions, be judged on how successfully they perform their mission? Yet school leaders have a good reason to resist contemporary accountability programs. Instead of articulating the mission of schools and then holding leaders accountable for…

The purpose of this article is to present an argument for the need for culturally responsive Response to Intervention (RTI) as an approach for reducing disproportionate minority representation in Special Education Programs for Students with Emotional Disturbances. We present an overview of the RTI model as initially intended for use in determining…

This UNESCO monograph reports a study of the history and current state of parent schools in China, focusing on successes and problems with the parent school system. Section 1 describes China's response to the World Summit for Children, and details the study's aims, which are: (1) to understand family life and its roles; (2) understand the role and…

A summary is presented of the deliberations of a workshop devoted to the National Research and Education Network (NREN). It also includes policy papers from 18 organizations that broadly represent NREN constituencies in government, education, and industry. The NREN is one of the major components of the High-Performance Computing Act of 1991…

This manual for training university professionals, community employers, human resource professionals, and university students was developed by the "Career Connections" project at the University of Minnesota. The project endeavored to enhance the career potential of students with disabilities, educate faculty and staff to work with these…