Policymakers and education leaders in Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) states have been working since 2002 to meet all 12 "Challenge to Lead" Goals for Education. At the same time, SREB states have had to struggle with the toughest economic challenges in decades. Even so, SREB states have succeeded in achieving many of the goals…

The Oregon Statewide Report Card is an annual publication required by law (ORS 329.115), which reports on the state of public schools and their progress towards the goals of the Oregon Educational Act for the 21st Century. The purpose of the Oregon Report Card is to monitor trends among school districts and Oregon's progress toward achieving the…

Regardless of geographical limitations, community partnerships can flourish through videoconference technology. This article presents iDance Arizona (iDA) research as a tool for supporting the teaching and learning of dance in rural settings. This research focuses on university/K-12 collaborations and examines the pedagogy of videoconferencing in…

Dance as an art form is transformational to body, mind, and spirit. The author opines that public education would do just fine if dance was the "only" subject taught. This article presents the author's reflection on progress of dance in K-12 education. The author contends that progress in dance in K-12 education can perhaps be judged by the fact…

This report presents selected findings from the school district data file of the 2007-08 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). SASS is a nationally representative sample survey of public, private, and Bureau of Indian Education-funded (BIE) K-12 schools, principals, and teachers in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. The public school sample…

This paper extends the theory of conditional covariances to polytomous items. It has been proven that under some mild conditions, commonly assumed in the analysis of response data, the conditional covariance of two items, dichotomously or polytomously scored, given an appropriately chosen composite is positive if, and only if, the two items…

Secondary schools are not meeting the needs of students, and the call has gone out for reform. The application of rigor, relevance, and relationships is a current model of instruction. One teacher can make a difference to a twice exceptional student who is struggling. They must create classroom environments that welcome diversity, not just in…

When it comes to teacher preparation, the support provided to new teachers, and ongoing professional development for working teachers, Grades K-12 and the field of early care and education (ECE) are two very different worlds. While both worlds assume that teachers' classroom skills and behavior can be influenced at multiple points in time (through…

This paper aims to broaden the discussion about effective teacher preparation by exploring three hypotheses designed to expand the early care and education (ECE) research agenda: (1) Both the content and the method of delivery of an educational degree influence teacher practices; (2) Teachers' ability to apply knowledge and skills effectively…

America's advantage has historically been its people's creativity, flexibility and entrepreneurship. But just as painters need to be proficient in technique and theory to produce great masterpieces, the next generation of Americans will likely require a solid grounding in mathematics and science for their creativity to be maximized in a world…

To many, it seems obvious which schools are failing--schools whose students perform poorly on achievement tests. But since evaluating schools on achievement mixes the effects of school and nonschool influences, achievement-based evaluation likely underestimates the effectiveness of schools that serve disadvantaged populations. In this article, the…

An education gap between white students and their black and Hispanic peers is something to which most Americans have become accustomed. But this racial division of education--and hence of prospects for the future--is nothing less than tragic. The good news is that the racial divide in learning is a problem that can be fixed. Of course, it can only…

This policy research document is intended for Oklahoma policymakers to use when examining possible changes to the state assessment's alignment with the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The 2009 NAEP test is not yet in existence, so the purpose of this report is to give policymakers a head start in determining where they might,…

This policy research document is intended for New Mexico policymakers to use when examining possible changes to the state assessment's alignment with the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The 2009 NAEP test is not yet in existence, so the purpose of this report is to give policymakers a head start in determining where they might,…

The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine the perceptions of technology integration by 90 entry level students in a teacher education program. During their field experience placement, candidates observed teachers' integration of technology in the classroom. During the final week of observation, the candidates completed a modified…