This article talks about the author's experiences as a school librarian in meeting the accelerating demands for student's learning and achievement. School librarianship has definitely changed in the accelerating school universe since the publication of "Information Power: Guidelines for School Library Media Programs" in 1988. That…

This chapter explores the characteristics and features of remedial education at community colleges, examines participation in these courses, and reviews findings on the effects of remediation on student decisions and outcomes. (Contains 2 tables.)

What people mean when they use the phrase "content standard" varies all over the lot. In some states, content standards are little more than category labels describing collections of curricular aims in particular content areas. If a state's content standards are too numerous, then teachers do not know where to aim their instructional efforts. This…

Plagiarism involves stealing or closely imitating another's written, creative, electronic, photographed, taped, or promotional or research work, identifying it as your own without permission or authorization. In this article, the author presents a primer discussion of plagiarism prevention in middle school throughout high school. Among other…

The author talks about the benefit publications she received, being a member of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). The first one is entitled "NAEYC Early Childhood Program Standards and Accreditation Criteria". This document outlines a new accreditation system with 10 new program standards. Each standard is…

Ellen Lagemann focuses on developments within the history of education to examine questions about the role of humanities research in the study of education--an issue which has plagued education scholarship since its inception. In this article, Lagemann demonstrates that scholars of education have sought to base their work on factual or…

Just a few years ago, almost no one saw accreditation as a major force for change in higher education. It was generally regarded as something of an anachronism, a ritual institutions had to go through periodically just to stay legit. But accreditation is back. Anyone who doesn't think so should try Googling "accreditation": even with…

The conflict between the standards for student learning in evolution and what students actually learn is highlighted. It is vital that standards be written so that the outlined goals are practically attainable, as are used to design the state tests, and the standards for each grade level are written to coincide with results from the educational…

Adequacy is a derived concept whose origins in the school finance literature probably stem from San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973), a landmark federal case. Although there is often a recycling of definitions, 3 decades later, there is still little consensus on how to operationalize that concept. The purpose of this article…

In this article, we describe findings from an analysis of the relationship between scores on a standards-based teacher evaluation system modeled on the Framework for Teaching (Danielson, 1996) and student achievement measures in a large Western school district. We apply multilevel statistical modeling to study the relationship between the…

In this article, I draw several lessons learned about how to assess student, classroom, and teacher effects, with a specific focus on performance-based teacher evaluations. One lesson is that hierarchical linear modeling techniques are helpful in sorting out the magnitude of impacts at these three different levels of the education system. The…

This article explores the role of the public in California's educational accountability system. Drawing on a review of state policy and case studies of two school communities, it examines whether California's accountability system draws on and supports an informed and engaged public. The analysis points to a disconnect between a rhetoric that…

In this article, the author discusses how after-school programs are very popular with the public. A series of annual voter surveys conducted by the Afterschool Alliance shows public support consistently running in the 90 percent range, with 76 percent of voters even going so far as to say they would be willing to pay additional taxes if more…

This article describes the Soddy-Daisy High School in southeastern Tennessee. It used to be that vocational training and a focus on academic studies were considered completely different means of education. But in Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee, the two go hand in hand. Eric Thomas and his brother Mark, teach side by side in adjacent rooms, where computer…

The Bookmark method for setting standards on educational tests is currently one of the most popular standard-setting methods. However, research to support the method is scarce. In this report, we review the published and unpublished literature on this method as well as some seminal work in the area of evaluating standard-setting studies. Our…