A primary focus of recent educational policymaking has been on improving measures of teaching effectiveness, attributable in part to recent federal policies such as the Race to the Top initiative and Investing in Innovation. To date, neither researchers nor practitioners have arrived at a consensus on the best methods for evaluating special…

To meet the demands of living and working in the 21st century, it is critical that every P-12 student in every classroom have an effective teacher. Yet, each year, thousands of new teachers enter the field unprepared to meet the challenges of today's classroom. Recent federal policies such as No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top have made…

In order to meet the federal mandate specified by the No Child Left Behind Act to demonstrate content competency for teaching certification, students must pass a written examination. Missouri and 37 other states chose the Praxis II to satisfy requirements. Presently, schools of education advertise the passing rate of the Praxis II as 100%, since…

The federal "No Child Left Behind Act of 2001" (NCLB) legislation required school districts to ensure that all teachers of core academic subjects met the requirements to be designated highly qualified by July 1, 2006. However, because no Maryland counties were able to comply with the 100 percent highly qualified designation by July 1,…

The Tennessee General Assembly passed legislation in 2007 requiring that the State Board of Education produce an assessment on the effectiveness of teacher training programs. The law requires that the report include data on the performance of each program's graduates in the following areas: placement and retention rates, Praxis II results, and…

The Tennessee General Assembly passed legislation in 2007 requiring that the State Board of Education produce an assessment on the effectiveness of teacher training programs. The law requires that the report includes data on the performance of each program's graduates in the following areas: placement and retention rates, Praxis II results, and…

Connecticut's Alternate Route to Certification Program--ARC, as it is commonly known--prepares talented, well-educated adults to become certified as teachers in Connecticut's public schools. ARC was created in 1986 by the Connecticut state legislature to encourage mid-career adults with strong subject area backgrounds to become teachers. Today ARC…

Much attention has been paid to the "highly qualified" requirements for teachers in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), but the paraprofessional provisions have stayed out of the spotlight. With the deadline for compliance approaching, it is important to turn everyone's attention to these provisions to see who they affect, what new…

Standardized testing, mandated by NCLB, can act as a barrier to prevent Indigenous students from entering teacher training programs and achieving "highly-qualified" certification upon exiting. Such regulations work against the nation-to-nation trust agreements that would place Indigenous teachers within Native school systems. Although…

The purpose of this paper is to examine how well-prepared vocational educators are to teach courses and programs that reflect the emphasis on academic skills in the Perkins III legislation. The paper examines the academic skills and pedagogical knowledge of elementary, secondary and secondary vocational candidates to assess how well-prepared…

The visionary social struggle that resulted in the 1954 "Brown v. Board of Education" decision did not take into account the ways ideologically distorted knowledge sustains societal injustice, particularly academic and school knowledge about black history and culture. This delimited vision of equal justice raises a number of questions of…

Since the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act or the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001, much has been said and written about the law by a variety of education observers, practitioners, and policymakers from both sides of the political aisle. With support from the Ford, Rockefeller, and Z. Smith Reynolds foundations,…

This paper is one of four individual case study reports presenting the qualitative findings from a five-year investigation of the impact of accountability reform on students with disabilities in four states, eight districts, and twenty schools. This case study report presents qualitative data collected over a four-year period--2001-2004--from…

Several federal legislative proposals have called for specified minimum pass rates on state teacher licensing examinations to establish institutional eligibility for certain federal funding. Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia will use The Praxis Series: Professional Assessments for Beginning Teachers developed by the Educational…

The past eight years have seen an unprecedented level of education policy activity focused on issues of teacher quality. Policies have been developed at federal, state, and institutional levels, and include increased institutional reporting of teacher candidates' test scores, the mandate for Highly Qualified Teachers (HQT) in the No Child Left…