This handbook is a guide to help educators and administrators with the decisions they face in the design of an arts assessment. The guide is divided into two broad parts: Part 1: "Background for Thoughtful Arts Education Assessment"; and Part 2: "Assessment Design in Action." The guide includes: (1) a brief background on the…

Arts cultivate the whole child, building many kinds of literacy while developing intuition, reasoning, creativity, imagination, and dexterity into diverse forms of expression and communication. The arts enable students to make decisions and seek multiple solutions. They advance higher order thinking skills of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.…

In the 1996-1997 school year, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), Illinois, began a national trend when it included a required summer program, Summer Bridge, as a central component of its efforts to end social promotion. More than 21,000 students in grades 3, 6, and 8, the promotional gate grades, have attended Summer Bridge each year, making it one…

From the mission, several principles were developed to guide the School-Based Management and Accountability Program (the ABCs). (1) The ABCs sets standards for student performance and growth in the basics that are the foundation for further learning and achievement; (2) The accountability system in the ABCs plan is designed to result in improved…

Explore how high-level users of ASCD's Understanding by Design (UbD) have applied this best-selling framework to improve both student achievement and organizational effectiveness. Incorporating advice and guidelines from educators throughout the United States, John Brown gives you a behind-the-scenes look at how they leverage UbD principles to…

The School Improvement Specialist Project prepared seven modules. School improvement specialists, as defined by the Appalachia Educational Laboratory at Edvantia, are change agents who work with schools to help them improve in the following areas so as to increase student achievement. These modules are intended to provide training materials for…

Everyone talks about "best practice" teaching--what does it actually look like in the classroom? How do working teachers translate complex curriculum standards into simple, workable classroom structures that embody exemplary instruction--and still let kids find joy in learning? In this book, the authors present seven basic teaching structures that…

"The Achiever" is a monthly publication for parents and community leaders from the Office of Communications and Outreach, U.S. Department of Education (ED). Each issue contains news and information about school improvement in the United States. Highlights of this issue include: (1) Budget Proposal Advances NCLB, Introduces…

In this Education Policy Brief, the Center for Evaluation & Education Policy at Indiana University examines the necessity for future funding of educational technology in the state of Indiana and the relationship between technology and student academic achievement, the hallmark concern of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). In…

The purpose of this document is to familiarize educators and parents with the text-based portion of the Delaware Student Testing Program (DSTP) writing assessment for third grade. The DSTP writing assessment consists of one "stand-alone" writing prompt (representing 2/3 of the overall writing score) and one "text-based" prompt…

This lesson plan about Indiana's court system is designed to work with any classroom resources a teacher may use when teaching a U.S. history, government, or Indiana history class. The lesson also provides online suggestions, general legal links at the end of the lesson to aid a teacher or student interested in exploring other legal topics, and a…

The Rhode Island state social studies curriculum for history, geography, civics, economics, and the behavioral sciences should promote civic responsibility and active civic participation. Rhode Island recommends that teachers and administrators use national social studies content standards rather than support the development of their own state…

As adults, today's students will have to deal with emerging problems societal changes are creating. Improving public education for all will require educational reform that better accommodates under-served American youth. This chapter discusses the educational standards movement, which assumes that virtually all learners can achieve educational…

The centrality of school leadership as a necessary element for school success is a well-determined part of the educational leadership research canon. Although school leadership is broad-based and includes many factors, the central role the principal plays is most often seen as a pivot around which much of a school's progress depends. However, it…

This guide to Delaware social studies standards for grades K-5 is intended to help and support local school districts in their development of a standards-based curriculum. The guide cites four civics standards, providing end of cluster expectations (listing areas which will serve as the basis for student assessment) and performance indicators for…