Little research has been done into how the results of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) affect national educational reform and policy-making. This paper examines the normative impact of PISA by investigating how, and the extent to which , national policy actors use PISA in policies and practices, to evaluate and improve…

This summary report by the Center on Education Policy (CEP) pulls together findings from a wide array of studies on student motivation by scholars in a range of disciplines, as well as lessons from programs around the country intended to increase motivation. It is intended to start a conversation about the importance of motivation and the policies…

ELT (English language teaching) in Spain is witnessing the arrival of content and language integrated learning (CLIL) and English is changing from a goal-oriented school subject to a medium of instruction for content subjects. What is taking place in our system is influenced by what has previously happened elsewhere. Two research episodes have…

Students with emotional and behavioral disorders are at great risk for long-term negative outcomes. Researchers and practitioners alike acknowledge the need for evidence-based, preventive, and early intervention strategies. Accordingly, in this chapter an expanded view of prevention is presented as a series of data driven decisions to guide…

States are making progress in supporting effective data use, but the hardest work remains. Although states collect quality data and have enacted policy changes, they have not yet focused on meeting people's needs. This report includes the following: (1) Changing the Culture of Education Data Takes Systems, Policies, and People; (2) Data for Action…

This issue of ETS Policy Notes (Vol. 20, No. 4) provides highlights from the symposium, "Middle School Matters: Improving the Life Course of Black Boys" held on July 23-24, 2012. The second in a series of four symposia co-sponsored by ETS and the Children's Defense Fund (CDF), the seminar examined the education and status of…

Regardless of the relentless efforts of the federal and state government, as well as those of local school districts, students not completing high school continue to weigh down the educational system and society as a whole. Schools face the challenge of transforming the inclination for students to drop out of school with the associated damaging…

Within the framework of the strategic journey undertaken between 2005 and 2010, this paper seeks to examine how the University of Melbourne sought to differentiate itself through the introduction and reconceptualisation of a "third stream" of academic work. Specifically, this paper seeks to investigate, through qualitative methods, how…

"Race Traitor", a movement founded by Noel Ignatiev and John Garvey, has been given a boost in recent months in three different arenas: the Occupy movement; an antiracist advertising campaign; and in an academic journal. With respect to the last, which is the main focus of this paper, Critical Race Theorists John Preston and Charlotte…

As for all teacher education programs, historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have been subject to a host of policy mandates for reform over the past three decades. As a group their approach to these changes has differed from those of majority institutions and their voice in the policy reform dialogue has been muted or absent. This…

Early status reports on WAC call for engagement with the disciplines, robust research about writing, and a transformation from missionary work to a more wide-ranging model. A Taxonomy of WAC describes common characteristics of WAC programs as well as organizing those characteristics into a progression from initiation to change agency. (Contains 1…

In 2010, California's then-governor Schwarzenegger signed Senate Bill 1440, called the "Student Transfer Achievement Reform Act" (Padilla, 2010), into law. This bill mandated that the state's 112 community colleges (CCCs) develop a new type of associate degree, an "associate degree for transfer," that specifically prepares a…

The education sector remains abuzz with cost-cutting expectations despite pressures to increase services. Automation of costly manual tasks could save funds for many of these institutions, specifically in data protection. The IT departments of schools and universities can take advantage of a proven cost-savings opportunity in data protection that…

The term "talent development" has historically been associated only with gifted education in the K12 education world. But for the past 30 years, husband and wife team Joseph Renzulli and Sally Reis have been steadily increasing the pool of educators trained to apply talent development practices to mainstream instruction through the Renzulli…

In Sweden, higher education has moved away from distance education, including physical meetings, to online education with no physical meetings at all. This article focuses on the shift from distance to online education using an educational management perspective that is based on economic, staff, and student data collected between 1994 and 2010…