Several avenues are open to students who wish to study advanced science or mathematics in high school, which include Advanced Placement courses and teacher-designed courses unaffiliated with organized programs. We employ a retrospective cohort study of 4,691 nationally representative college students at 34 randomly selected, colleges and…

PISA 2012 results indicate that school systems that group students based on ability levels tend to have lower performance than those that do not divide students by ability. One way some in the United States have sought to increase equity of opportunity is to mandate enrollment of students in college-preparatory mathematics, i.e., Algebra 1 in…

Charter schools--public schools of choice that are operated autonomously, outside the direct control of local school districts--have become more prevalent over the past two decades. There is no consensus about whether, on average, charter schools are doing better or worse than conventional public schools at promoting the achievement of their…

The topic of "teacher professionalism" is one of the most crucial ones in quality education research. It has a potential to generate results that could inform and hence enhance the practice in classrooms. Thus, research in this field needs reliable instruments to measure the professional knowledge of our teachers to be able to generate…

By leveraging the strengths and commitments of each of the partners, a university, a private nonprofit, and a middle-sized urban school district, collaborated to impact student learning of key concepts in middle-grade mathematics and to change mathematics teaching. The project targeted middle grades mathematics because success in it is the…

In this study, several middle school factors of students from two consecutive graduating classes were analyzed to determine what relation they had to college readiness, as measured by ACT subtest scores. The academic factors included: 8th grade EXPLORE composite score, 7th grade spring reading and math MAP scores, highest math course completed in…

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine the perceptions of certified support staff at a Georgia middle school, focusing on their opinions of Professional Learning Communities (PLC), the roles they played in PLCs and the effect PLCs had on their professional practices. This descriptive case study utilized open-ended interviews,…

Music teaching and learning are socially situated activities. School-university partnerships have the potential to impact preservice teachers' identities and level of socialization. Thus, a sociologically based belief system for establishing and maintaining school-university partnerships may provide cooperating teachers and university faculty…

This study identifies the kinds of problems teachers pose when they are asked to (a) generate problems from given information and (b) create new problems from ones given to them. To investigate teachers' problem posting, preservice and inservice teachers completed background questionnaires and four problem-posing instruments. Based on previous…

Most teacher education programs do not incorporate financial education preparations into courses required for early childhood, elementary education, and middle level candidates. The authors of this manuscript explore the reasons for this omission, particularly the mathematics education component, and clarify the issues surrounding this decision.…

There are ethnic group differences in academic achievement among Australian students, with Aboriginal students performing substantially below and Asian students above their peers. One factor that may contribute to these effects is societal stereotypes of Australian Asian and Aboriginal students, which may bias teachers' evaluations and influence…

The Urban Institute conducted an implementation and participant-outcomes evaluation of the Alaska Native Science & Engineering Program (ANSEP). ANSEP is a multi-stage initiative designed to prepare and support Alaska Native students from middle school through graduate school to succeed in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)…

Changes in the nature of assessment in science and mathematics have led to a profound change in the conceptions of assessment. The change in our understanding of assessment reflected a move toward the greater integration of assessment and learning--away from assessment instruments whose links to learning were weak. The aim of the current paper was…

This study described, analyzed, and compared the internal and external factors that prevented or fostered the implementation of a cognitive tool, GeoGebra, in the mathematics practices of 12 middle school teachers who had completed a master's degree program in mathematics successfully. Through the application of a case study approach as a…

The two research questions that guided this study were: (1) How do preservice teachers develop mathematical knowledge for teaching during a coordinated math methods course and field experience? and (2) What types of portfolio tasks lend themselves to documenting mathematical knowledge in teaching? Six, female, elementary (K-8) teacher candidates…