Following thirty-nine states, Illinois became the 40th state to make Civic Education a mandatory class for students to graduate high school in 2015. The mandated class is a semester long and usually occurs in the students Junior or Senior year of high school. The Illinois General Assembly then passed a separate bill that indicated that the 2016-17…

[Miami-Dade County Public Schools] M-DCPS had 22,447 graduates in the 2016-2017 academic year. Most students, 94%, achieved a standard diploma (24 credits). Some students choose an alternative curriculum where 333 (1%) achieved an Advanced International Certificate of Education (AICE) diploma and 404 (2%) achieved an International Baccalaureate…

The issuing of badges for achievement is not necessarily a new concept for adults (consider the military), nor for children (look at scouting). Yet, except for sports trophies and award days, the concept is alien to education where letter grades and scores on standardized tests remain the primary means of recognition. This document shares…

The present paper defines general curriculum requirements in higher education. It focuses on the history of the arguments that make up general curriculum requirements starting from the Yale Report 1828 to the recent perspectives on general curriculum. The purpose of the review is to illustrate that what defines knowledgeable person is determined…

This study focuses on the reasons why students from private universities who have finished their studies, but not their research work, a requirement to obtain their degree. Several studies agree that the supervision process is a fundamental factor to complete the thesis successfully. Thesis development and successful thesis completion are…

In 1997, the Department of English (Faculty of Languages, University of Tripoli) canceled Graduation Project (GP) as a graduation requirement primarily due to growing student plagiarism. Two decades on, the Department decided it is time for Returning to Graduation Project (RGP). In preparation for this, a Research Methods (RM) module was delivered…

Nationally, credit recovery has been used as a strategy to encourage and enable students to re-take previously failed courses needed to graduate. The School District of Philadelphia (SDP) offers both in-person and online options for recovering failed or missing credits required for graduation. This study provides a snapshot of the district's…

The goal of our ongoing research is to identify strengths and weaknesses of high school level science fair and improvements that can help science educators make science fair a more effective, inclusive and equitable learning experience. In this paper, we confirm and extend our previous findings in several important ways. We added new questions to…

Research shows that students who take advanced mathematics courses perform better on measures of college readiness than students who take less rigorous courses. However, no clear effect has been shown on requiring all students to take more advanced courses. This study examined whether increases in the number and level of mathematics courses…

High school graduation rates have increased dramatically in the past two decades. Some skepticism has arisen, however, because of the confluence of the graduation rise and the starts of high-stakes accountability for graduation rates with "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB). In this study we provide some of the first evidence about the role of…

Teacher preparation programs assist candidates with the pedagogical, theoretical, and practical application of teaching and learning. This article explored the dialog between a state education agency and teacher preparation programs' responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The author presents a research study of current teacher performance…

In Virginia, all high school students can earn either a Standard diploma or an Advanced Studies diploma, the latter being a college preparatory diploma. Starting in 2017, the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) began requiring students graduating with the Standard diploma to earn a career and technical education (CTE) credential to encourage…

Mass media provides a public space for its readers to enter the discussion on education, as they consume and interpret key messages, which are often shaped by key educational policies. With a suite of recent teacher education reform measures in Australia aimed at solving the "problem" with teacher quality, a conceptual map for conducting…

Undergraduate research in Japan, called graduation research (GR), is comparable to that in other countries and is defined here as a final-year curricular activity that completes undergraduate study. This article aims to elucidate GR to contribute to the scholarship of undergraduate research from an international perspective. The main findings…

In this article, the authors tackle the tension between a fact-based civics test and inquiry-based teaching and learning. The authors begin with a short history on the civics test and the new standards in Kentucky before turning their attention to one approach to the civics test using an Inquiry Design Model (IDM) inquiry--"Does the civics…