This article presents the author's critiques on Jim Garrison's essay and focuses on Garrison's concerns about the affronts posed to democracy by the standardization and accountability regimes in education. He rightfully highlights a few critical ways by which standardization and accountability in education reflect and reinforce antidemocratic…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) is the most successful attempt to gain consensus across states for 21st century standards in language arts and mathematics. So far, 46 states have accepted these standards, with two consortia organized to translate them into resources and sample activities. A consultant firm has been hired to develop the…

A year ago, top officials in the school leadership world were worried. It seemed to them that principals were being overlooked in national conversations about how to get educators ready for the Common Core State Standards. But that is changing. The past six months have seen a surge of activity to acquaint principals with the new standards and…

This article considers the failure of theory to provide a workable model for academic standards in use. Examining the contrast between theoretical perspectives, it argues that there are four dimensions for which the academy has failed to provide an adequate theoretical account of standards: documented or tacit knowledge of standards; norm or…

Grading is often seen as a point of conflict with students and, in upper elementary and beyond, with parents. It is a chore that consumes time and saps critical levels of energy better used for creative planning and preparation and face-to-face interactions with students. Grading is sometimes referred to as a "necessary evil," yet many teachers…

The National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) conducted a needs assessment to understand and describe early childhood services for preschool-age children with an Individualized Education Program (IEP) in the state of Connecticut. In collaboration with the Connecticut State Department of Education (CSDE), NIEER developed survey…

This report offers a framework for districts to use in their preparation to provide quality instruction through distance and blended models. In the wake of COVID-19, "teaching as usual" will be neither possible nor sufficient to meet students' needs because California's schools have experienced disruptions to each aspect of the…

These appendices accompany the report "Final Report of the i3 Impact Study of Making Sense of SCIENCE, 2016-17 through 2017-18." Science education has experienced a significant transition over the last decade, catalyzed by a re-envisioning of what students should know and be able to do in science. That re-envisioning culminated in the…

As the country continues to grapple with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, Career and Technical Education (CTE) stakeholders around the nation are thinking ahead to what education might look like in the future. Whether schools and postsecondary institutions will be able to open fully for the next school year using social distancing methods,…

For several years, WestEd's Measure to Learn and Improve (MLI) project team has kept California state policy leaders informed about the statewide implementation of the California Academic Standards in English language arts and mathematics, by summarizing and disseminating results from the RAND Corporation's annual American Educator Panel (AEP)…

Assessing students at kindergarten entry allows teachers to effectively plan instruction that meets individual student needs, and those of the class as a whole. Maryland uses Ready for Kindergarten (R4K): Maryland's Comprehensive Early Childhood Assessment System, a single coordinated system for measuring the knowledge, skills, and behaviors and…

This article examines whether and to what extent educational reforms in a post-conflict society conform to "global (regional) standards," and explores the meaning of inconsistencies observed in the process of global reform transfer. Among the nations of the world, nowhere is the influence of external forces on educational reforms more…

This article details what resulted when I re-designed my undergraduate statistics course to allow failure as a learning strategy and focused on achievement rather than performance. A variety of within and between sample t-tests are utilized to determine the impact of unlimited test and quiz opportunities on student learning on both quizzes and…

To meet the information literacy (IL) needs of chemistry students, The College of New Jersey's (TCNJ) Library and Chemistry Departments have created a three-year seminar with a strong IL component. The program focuses on IL skills necessary for success in industry and graduate or professional education, but may lack features specific to those…

How teachers make sense of new academic standards significantly shapes the implementation of those standards. Professional development organized around the analysis of mathematical tasks has potential to prepare teachers for standards implementation by helping them develop common understandings of standards and how to help students meet ambitious…