Explores the process of implementing the Nebraska Foreign Language Frameworks in an urban, Midwestern school district. Participants were two elementary, two middle school, and two high school teachers; the languages taught were French and Spanish. Findings show that the six teachers implemented the frameworks differently, depending mainly on…

To make standards inclusive for today's diverse student populations, educators must support and cultivate five conditions. Standards should be developmental and flexible, employ varied assessment tools, allow equitable access to meaningful content, involve the entire community in their implementation, and serve as a catalyst for other reforms.…

Many districts have a vision or mission statement that includes the importance of lifelong learning. The alternative, school-long learning, is exemplified by curricula and instruction that are generally only useful while the student is in school; it does little to stimulate or fulfill that element in those who find pleasure in the process and the…

This study considered curricular and instructional influences on early Chinese literacy attainment in Beijing, Hong Kong and Singapore. The participants included 198 pre-school children, their teachers and parents. Children were administered the Pre-school and Primary Chinese Literacy Scale at the age of either two or three years, and again one…

State and local officials are slowly untangling complicated webs of accountability, testing, and graduation policies, hoping to give thousands of students displaced by Hurricane Katrina a better handle on their academic standing. While officials in Texas, Tennessee, and Alabama offered some guidance to such students, school leaders in…

Americans are increasingly drawn to their own version of "muddling through," and are likely to view the process of reasoning from intellectual or moral principles with grave suspicion, if not outright hostility, as a form of undemocratic confinement. One sees this with especial clarity in today's institutions of higher education, in…

Presently, there are competing philosophies of education which need comparison. Two philosophies will be compared which are at opposite ends of the continuum. They are distinctly different. And yet, both schools of thought have their disciples. Each of the two will be discussed in terms of its essential features and then there will be selected…

The sight of young children eagerly reaching for and eating string beans, carrots, lettuce, radishes, and even raw beets and onions is an incredibly satisfying one for a science teacher. The experience of growing food is a natural motivation for getting children to eat more healthful foods, and the process of how food is grown, harvested, and…

Handling conflicts with students is a part of most educators' academic lives. Surprisingly little research, however, has investigated student perceptions of sources of conflict or instructor responses to disputes. To gain insight into faculty-student conflict, we administered a survey to 122 undergraduates. Students indicated that they frequently…

The National Science Education Standards (National Research Council [NRC], 1996) call for a greater emphasis on scientific inquiry in K-12 science classes. The Inquiry Standards recommend that students be engaged with scientific questions in which they collect and interpret data, give priority to evidence to construct explanations, test those…

The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education and the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning have awarded David Spence, its 2006 Virginia B. Smith Award for Innovative Leadership in Higher Education. Mr. Spence is formerly executive vice chancellor and chief academic officer of the California State University system and now…

The purpose of the study was twofold: (a) to examine a teacher's perceptions of attempting to implement assessments aligned with the NASPE standards and (b) to examine students' perceptions of assessment in physical education. Participants were 46 4th grade students and their physical education teacher. Data were collected through a Likert-scale…

We focus on how African American parents in a low-income neighborhood experience, interpret, and respond to current reform efforts as implemented in their children's school. As part of a larger project on parent-child numeracy connections in an elementary school, we interviewed 10 parents and held 2 focus group meetings, during which parents…

During the past twenty years, the accountability movement and its attendant testing have raised fears in the arts education community that schools will feel pressure to divert instructional time and resources toward tested areas of the curriculum, such as reading and math (Eisner 2000). This paper presents the results of studies on the impact of…

This paper reports on a multi-method study that examined the effects of including higher and lower proportions of students designated as having special educational needs on student achievement in secondary schools. It explores some of the issues involved in conducting such research and considers the extent to which newly available national data in…