For the last 30 years, the Public Policy Forum has collected and analyzed education data to produce an annual report on the demographics, academic performance, and finances of public school districts in southeast Wisconsin. In the three decades of producing this report, few years have exhibited as much change and transformation as this one. The…

This Annual Service Plan Report discusses the results related to measures in the Ministry of Education's 2015/16-2017/18 Service Plan. Work within the Ministry is driven by the Minister's Mandate Letter, aligning with government's strategic mandate and the Ministry's goals, objectives, and strategies. Comparing performance against these principles…

Answering the question of how a Romney administration would tackle education requires us to keep three things in mind. First, education is a minor issue in this election and would be a secondary concern for a Republican President focused on economic growth, the deficit, tax cuts, and reversing the Affordable Care Act. Second, there are few stark…

Curriculum standards provide classroom teachers with frameworks to guide instruction during the academic year and throughout a student's schooling. Unfortunately, standards are misconstrued as all-encompassing--as a compendium of all mathematics content that can and should be taught to students. Such a view is unfortunate. Mathematics teachers…

The aim of this study was to explore the spiral relation and the congruency between mathematics standards listed in the Early Childhood and First Grade curricula in Turkey. A descriptive content analysis was conducted on Early Child Education Curriculum (OOEP) for 36-72 months old children and Math Curriculum for the Grades 1-5 (IMOP), both…

Through a non-experimental descriptive and comparative mixed-methods approach, this study investigated the experiences of sixth grade earth science students with groundwater physical models through an extended SE learning cycle format. The data collection was based on a series of quantitative and qualitative research tools intended to investigate…

The 2010 report from the National Research Council on teacher education programs in the United States, "Preparing Teachers: Building Evidence for Sound Policy," reported that "the empirical evidence on effective teacher preparation [is] nearly nonexistent" (p. 99). The publication later that year of two major studies, one on…

At open-access two-year public colleges, the goal of the traditional assessment and placement process is to match incoming students to the developmental or college-level courses for which they have adequate preparation; the process presumably increases underprepared students' chances of short- and long-term success in college while maintaining the…

In this technical report, we document the development and piloting of easyCBM reading measures aligned to the Common Core State Standards, designed for use in screening students at risk for reading difficulty and monitoring their progress as they develop reading skills. The measures, which assess students' ability to respond to…

This report examines K-12 science standards for fifty states and the District of Columbia, as well as the science assessment framework of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The reviewers' aim is to evaluate them for their intrinsic clarity, completeness, and scientific correctness. Their earlier evaluations, as well as those…

California's implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), and its governing state role in one of the Race to the Top comprehensive academic assessment consortia, present a major opportunity to dig deeply into the challenges of fair and accurate assessment of the academic performance of its English Learners (ELs). Moreover, recent…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English language arts and mathematics represent a sea change in standards-based reform and their implementation is the movement's next--and greatest--challenge. Yet, while most states have now set forth implementation plans, these tomes seldom address the crucial matter of cost. Putting a Price Tag on the…

Recognizing the importance of early childhood education for young children, states are planning and implementing initiatives to assure greater access to high-quality, elementary-school based preschool. In the field of early childhood education the leading professional organizations, such as the National Association for the Education of Young…

Meeting the unique and diverse needs of students challenges educators daily. And, the demand for improvement increases at the same pace. Enormous efforts are underway in school systems and state agencies across the country to design and implement multiple, high-stakes changes in educator effectiveness systems, college- and career-ready standards,…

Since coming to office, the Obama Administration has been intent on standardizing what is taught at each grade level in all of the nation's schools. It has used its flagship "Race to the Top" competitive grant program to entice states to adopt the K-12 standards developed by a joint project of the National Governors Association (NGA) and…