In this article, the author suggests that good teachers add value in a number of measurable and immeasurable ways. While the gain of a student in mathematics can be measured, it is impossible to measure the impact of a teacher who motivated a child to want to do math. Teachers cannot control how kids enter the classroom and should not be held…

Under President Bush's proposed fiscal 2006 budget, the federal Head Start program would get a $45 million increase in funding. That money, however, would go for a project involving only a handful of states, not to increase the main program educating preschoolers. The proposed increase to Head Start's fiscal 2005 budget of $6.84 billion would go…

This article discusses a pilot project in New Mexico that gives kindergartners--and some 1st graders--20 extra days before the school year begins to learn the ropes and jump into their lessons. The project is called Kindergarten-Plus, the concept is the brainchild of former American Federation of Teachers President Sandra Feldman. According to…

In the present study, college student-athletes were either placed in seminars that were intended to motivate them to succeed on and off the field (i.e., in their chosen sport) or placed in a control group (i.e., a group that did not experience these motivational seminars). Consequently, they were surveyed in order to determine if the…

Fifty-eight principals participated in this pilot study designed to examine the nature of school administrators' current practices in written communication. Work samples were examined against ISLLC standards that call for competency in facilitating vision, communicating culture and instruction, managing the organization, developing collaboration…

Two prototype voice output communication aids were implemented to compare methods of graphic symbol message formulation; one emulated current devices that require syntactical ordering of icons (Default) and the other used semantic frames (iconCHAT). Message constructions of eight typically developing children (7-10 years of age) using both…

Mathematics in Education and Industry (MEI), with funding from Gatsby Technical Education Projects (GTEP), ran the "Enabling Access to Further Mathematics" project from 2000 to 2003. This pilot project was designed to provide AS- and A-level students with additional opportunities to study Further Mathematics, through the use of …

Lessons about elementary particles at the secondary school level can degenerate into listing a zoo of particles and reactions, resulting in disorganized and rather meaningless knowledge. A more powerful way is to focus on conservation laws, symmetries and reaction diagrams. The conservation laws and symmetries provide generalizing power that…

Objective: To compare simulator-based teaching with traditional instruction among clinical medical students. Methods: Randomized controlled trial with written pre-post testing. Third-year medical students (n = 38) received either a myocardial infarction (MI) simulation followed by a reactive airways disease (RAD) lecture, or a RAD simulation…

This article discusses the debate on the introduction of course fees in German higher education. It also discusses a pilot model developed by the Conference of University Deans (HRK) Presidium to resolve the fee question. This model is attuned to competition and is at the same time socially acceptable. The main idea is that neither a general…

E.O. Leont'eva's article "Education from the Seamy Underside: Experience from a Pilot Survey of "Shadow" Relations in Colleges and Universities," published in the December 2004 issue of the journal "Sotsiologicheskie issledovanii," described informal practices for getting grades. The empirical base was the findings of…

This paper critically evaluates the pilot of a Thesis Writers' Circles program offered to Education PhD and DEd students at the University of Melbourne in semester 2, 2005. The analysis focuses on the needs of those students that were felt to be well-met by this model of support. Broadly, the paper identifies two distinct but inter-related themes:…

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 requires states to monitor student and school performance based on "adequate yearly progress" (AYP), which essentially is a count of the number of students meeting a specified target. States, many of which have a growing number of schools and school districts entering NCLB's "needs…

Introduction: A gap exists between asthma guidelines and actual care delivered. We developed an educational intervention using simulated physician-patient encounters as part of a project to improve asthma management by community-based primary care providers. We hypothesized that this type of skills-based interactive training would improve…

Workplace learning in a crisis-rich environment is often difficult if not impossible to integrate into programs so that students are able to experience and apply crisis management practices and principles. This study presents the results of a pilot project that examined the effective use of a virtual reality (VR) environment as a tool to teach…