The present research investigated the impact of environmental education (EE) programs on student achievement in math, reading, and writing by comparing student performances on two standardized tests for environmental education schools and schools with traditional curriculum. Quantitative analysis was used to evaluate the impact of the EE programs.…

This article reports on research commissioned by the Scottish Executive Education Department (SEED). It aimed to establish the range and extent of policy and provision in the area of specific learning difficulties (SpLD) and dyslexia throughout Scotland. The research was conducted between January and June 2004 by a team from the University of…

Performance assessment is an important task in all levels of education, both as input for identifying remedial needs of individual students and for improving general quality of education. Although explicit assessment measures can be obtained through objective standardized testing, it is much more difficult to capture fuzzier, or tacit, performance…

This article reports the relative effect of smart and mainstream schooling on students' acquisition of science process skills which was measured using TIPS-II(M)--the Malay version of Burns, Okey, and Wise's (1985) Test of Integrated Process Skills II. Using students' primary-school science achievement results in the Standardized National…

The present study used data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2003 to look at the trend in instructional strategies in science teaching and its effect on the science achievement. Based on the analysis, the strategies used by most science teachers were demonstration, practical work and the lecture method. Among…

In a recent court case, Andrew H. K. Wong was dismissed from University of California at Davis medical school. He sued the university for discrimination, in violation of the American with Disabilities Act (ADA), but lost. Unfortunately, these types of court decisions and the overly mechanistic and rigid interpretations of ADA are threatening the…

President George W. Bush's approach to education policy has earned him cautious plaudits from otherwise hostile critics, who see much to admire in the implementation of standards for education. However useful such standards for testing students' technical skills like arithmetic and reading, they create problems for less-standardized processes like…

Providing advanced training to individuals in specialized disciplinary areas is one of the primary purposes of universities' graduate programs. Typically these programs are selective and require that a number of criteria be met, such as successful completion of undergraduate education, and a selected range of scores on standardized exams. For…

For all the fractious debate in America over the state of public schools, those on the political Left and Right agree that the "achievement gaps" are real. But what do most people mean when they say "achievement gaps"? Gaps in standardized test scores, of course. The gaps consist of the differences between the test scores of…

This paper presents and critically analyzes data from a project that sought teacher candidates' responses to the process and content of the Ontario Teacher Qualifying Test (OTQT), a mandatory, standardized, pencil and paper initial teacher qualification test. The aim of the project, guided by a critical democratic perspective, was to critically…

We report on a 20-year follow-up of 30 children with developmental delays identified at age 3. Our purpose was to assess the relationship of early indicators of delay to cognitive and personal-social status in young adulthood. Predictors were Developmental and Personal-Social factors derived from standardized tests and parent questionnaires…

The objective of this study was to examine the nature of preservice teachers' evaluations of elementary mathematics problems using the Mathematical Tasks Framework (MTF), a model designed to discriminate among tasks according to their cognitive complexity. We also tested the relationship between mathematics content knowledge and problem length on…

In the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) era, accountability has focused almost exclusively on basic academic skills. In this article, the authors ask if the accountability system they have is producing the kind of graduates they want. They state that NCLB holds all elementary schools, regardless of student characteristics, accountable for achieving…

Increasingly, mainstream U.S. classrooms include children who are English-language learners (ELLs). As a result, teachers need to become more aware of ways to assess the literacy progress of their ELL students. The first type of assessment that teachers need to make is to determine ELLs' literacy backgrounds. Teachers can use predictability logs…

The history of young adolescent education can be viewed as an ongoing search for the appropriate combination of school organization, curriculum, and instructional practices for young adolescents. While middle schools have now become the most common pattern for schools housing young adolescents, there have always been other broader school…