In 1910, Victoria established an elite form of state secondary education that remained essentially unchanged until the introduction of a progressive curriculum during the late 1960s. This radical and voluntary curriculum introduced child-centred learning and personal development skills to state secondary schools. Many state secondary music…

The creators and supporters of the Common Core State Standards claim that the Standards require greater emphasis on higher-order thinking than previous state standards in mathematics and English language arts. We used a qualitative case study design with content analysis methods to test the claim. We compared the levels of thinking required by the…

Measures of Academic Progress® (MAP®) Science for use with Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) assessments are available for the 2016-17 school year. These new assessments measure student growth toward understanding of the multidimensional NGSS performance expectations. This report presents MAP Science for use with NGSS by presenting and…

In this research, I investigated teachers' interpretations of the goals of professional development and factors that contributed to enacted instructional practices. A multiple-case study design was used to examine the interpretations of four high school teachers participating in a year-long professional development program with a standards-based…

The Common Core State Standards highlight the need to read--independently, closely, and proficiently--increasingly complex texts. However, they do not specify how such reading is to be done. This column provides a brief critique of text complexity and close reading and offers some concrete ideas for operationalizing these two concepts in secondary…

Should all students take Algebra 2? Florida seemed to say "no" this spring with the passage of a law striking it from graduation requirements. Texas said much the same in legislation Republican Gov. Rick Perry signed this week that also backs away from Algebra 2 for all. Those steps come as the Common Core State Standards for math set…

Direct assessments of instructional practice (e.g., classroom observations) are necessary to identify and eliminate opportunity gaps in students' learning of mathematics. This study examined 114 middle school mathematics classrooms in four instructionally focused urban districts. Results from the Instructional Quality Assessment identified high…

Variations of the question, "How are you doing in school?" are among those most frequently posed by adults to students (Reeves, 2004). Grades represent the primary source of that information; indeed, Olson (1995) called grades "one of the most sacred traditions in American education" (p. 24). There is so much trust in the…

This paper analyzes teacher responses to a distinctive reform that sought to implement alignment between high schools and colleges. A survey of 225 teachers is used to examine teachers' perceptions of the reform's effectiveness, further resources needed, and how perceptions changed over time. The reform was perceived as effective for college-bound…

What do K-12 schools need to do to prepare their students for adult success? This was the question that originally catalyzed the standards-and-accountability movement some 30 years ago, though it seems somehow to have gotten lost. Today the question merits revisiting, because addressing it makes a strong case for taking an integrated approach to…

This report examines how technology and automation are changing the job market -- and what states can do to prepare adults for the new workplace. It analyzes shifts from low- to middle-skills jobs, details current education levels, and offers recommendations for retooling adult education programs.

Why are there only crumbs left at the bottom of the cereal box? Many factors, such as package handling, have caused the cereal pieces to break down into crumbs. This explanation is also related to the process of creating sediment from rocks. Sediment is created by weathering over millions of years, and it is deposited all over the world by…

Activities such as the Shays' Rebellion investigation outlined in this article enable students to develop inquiry and literacy practices as they integrate critical reading, historical thinking, and argument writing.

The Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) high school test is administered to all Bay State students--both those intending to enroll in college and the many with no such intention. The MCAS high school test is a retrospectively focused standards-based achievement test, designed to measure how well students have mastered the material…

Several states have changed their statewide achievement tests over the past 5 years. These changes may pose difficulties for educators tasked with identifying students in need of additional support. This study evaluated the stability of decision-making accuracy estimates across changes to the statewide achievement test. We analyzed extant data…