The Illinois Learning Standards are state content standards that describe what students should know and be able to achieve in grades K-12. The challenge for the 2000-2001 school year was to produce performance standards that would indicate how well students should perform to meet the state standards. The performance standards describe how well…

An analytical framework based on Joel Kovel's five meditations on spirit (spirit power, spirit being, spirit meaning, spirit and desire, and divine spirit) was used to explore the spirituality of committed environmental activists. A purposeful and snowball sampling method was used to interview 18 individuals with a strong commitment to…

This paper presents the results of the 2001 Student Satisfaction Inventory for Western Iowa Tech Community College (WITCC). Twenty-six course sections with an enrollment of 432 students were randomly sampled from the College's data system. Instructors administered the survey to all students in attendance during their class periods. A total of 259…

This document includes presentation summaries and policy recommendations from the 2004 Tomas Rivera Policy Institute (TRPI) Education Conference: (1) The Present and Coming Crisis: Demography and Education (Dowell Myers and Estela Mara Bensimon); (2) A View from the Academic Community (Moderators: Jorge Haynes and Jamilah Moore; Presenters:…

What are the forces that will continue to shape the U.S. workforce and workplace over the next 10 to 15 years? With such inevitabilities as the proliferation and acceleration of technology worldwide, will more individuals work at home, will more businesses outsource their noncore functions -- and with what consequences? Answering such questions…

Much of the contention for establishing national educational standards rests on the assumption that such standards are required for a productive labor force and for economic productivity. However, this assumption has not been subjected to rigorous economic analysis. This paper briefly examines the evidence that does exist that links existing and…

The motivation to learn of African American high school students was examined by asking them about their favorite and least favorite classes. Two hundred and seventy-five students attending three urban high schools were randomly selected from their history classes to respond to a questionnaire on their perceptions of ability, goals, and reasons…

A statewide performance-based accreditation system began using a performance index in 1995-96 to indicate where school districts fall in the distribution of accreditation levels. The purpose of this study was to determine whether there was a significant gain in the performance index in the second year. The performance index was based on the…

Since the late 1960s when Benjamin Bloom outlined his mastery teaching strategy, mastery learning programs have been implemented, such as Learning for Mastery and the Personalized System of Instruction, and several experiments have been carried out to test whether the mastery learning technique has an effect on student achievement. This paper…

This paper provides an overview of national and state efforts to address school-performance scores as a means of monitoring local school productivity for the 21st century. School-accountability report cards were introduced in the early 1990s to provide parents and others with interesting and useful information about schools. However, many of these…

This study sought to determine if participation as a musician or an athlete had an effect on academic achievement as measured by standardized test scores. It was hypothesized that students who received training as musicians would score higher on the core battery composite of reading, language, and mathematics sections of the California Achievement…

Cross-national classroom environment research investigating differences in mathematics classroom environment according to country (Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom), grade level (grades 8, 10, and 12), and student gender was conducted using a sample of 3,602 students from 29 schools. Students responded to a questionnaire developed from…

Noting that few would dispute the essential role of motivation in promoting academic engagement and achievement, this book serves as a guide to motivating students in grades K-3. The book presents research-based strategies and techniques that are then illustrated in three extended case studies of highly successful motivators, demonstrating how…

This study tested the hypothesis that the common approach to test construction in which recognition questions (RQs), such as multiple-choice items, are followed by constructed response questions (CRQs) encourages students to use the informationally rich RQs to gain marks on the CRQs, thus introducing Local Item Dependence (LID) and inflating the…

This study examined the impact of pupil age at time of school entry in a large public school in Bronx, New York. Results from a literacy assessment were examined for kindergarten, first-, and second-grade students. The assessment rated children on their knowledge of the alphabet, sight-word vocabulary, phonemic awareness, reading, and writing…