The following profiles address how the state departments of education are helping educators prepare for and implement their states' new college- and career-readiness standards and aligned assessments, through professional learning. SREB researchers examined each state's major professional development efforts around its new standards in order to…

In education, professional development (PD) is the continuing education of teachers and administrators. Many studies have described PD as a conventional, top-down type of training that teachers experience in schools. Commonly known as the "institutional model," this type of PD is isolated from classroom practice and occurs as mandatory…

Using a learning design perspective on No Child Left Behind (NCLB), I examine how accountability policy shaped urban educators' instructional sensemaking. Focusing on the role of policy-rooted classifications, I examine conversations from a middle school mathematics teacher team as a "best case" because they worked diligently to comply…

Special education and general education teachers must work collaboratively in a single classroom that serves the diverse needs of all children due to federal regulations such as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 2004. Evidence-based practices that foster collaboration are scarce. The…

This article provides commentary on the five articles in this issue on large-scale interventions in science education for diverse student groups in varied educational settings. Using these articles as a point of departure, I discuss three challenges to science education research and practice. The first concerns the changed meaning of science…

As numerous studies from 1906 on have confirmed, children lose ground in learning if they lack opportunities for building skills over the summer. Nonetheless, summer learning loss comes up but rarely in the national discussion of education reform. By the end of summer, students perform on average one month behind where they left off in the spring.…

Instructional coaching is a reality in many schools today, yet administrators often lack experience or background on how to utilize this professional development model effectively. Instructional coaching can help administrators balance the managerial and instructional leadership responsibilities required of their role. As districts adopt the…

Place-name geography, as it is sometimes called, is merely the tip of the iceberg in a field that aims to understand people and places and their interactions with the environment. Geography is also the study of spatial distributions and interpreting what they mean. This review lays out the definition of the nature of science as it relates to…

Implementation of college- and career-readiness standards is some of the most important work currently underway in states to improve student achievement and public education overall. SREB examined the efforts of 14 states--including 11 SREB states--to support implementation of new college- and career-readiness standards. The goal of the research…

Reading difficulties and disabilities present serious and potentially lifelong challenges. Children who do not read well are more likely to be retained a grade in school, drop out of high school, become a teen parent, or enter the juvenile justice system. Building on the extant research and seminal studies, including the National Reading Panel and…

Special education, a discipline that aims to provide specialized instruction to meet the unique needs of each child with a disability, has turned 40 years old in the United States. Ever since the passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (P.L. 94-142) in 1975, every state has been directed to provide a free and appropriate…

Legislation leading to the mandating of accountability testing in schools was chronicled between the publication of "A Nation at Risk" (1983) to the conclusion of No Child Left Behind (2016). Involvement in education by the federal government increased throughout the educational legislation during this time period. The Omnibus Trade and…

The field of dance arts education in the United States is in an entirely different place today than it was at the turn of the century. Much of this change is due to a convergence of events that involved: federal and state legislation, policy, and funding that supported dance in arts education; a forty-year transition of dance out of departments of…

This paper first outlines some of the challenges students and teachers are facing in schools around the country. These challenges include social issues such as violence, drugs and bulling. This coupled with the fact that many instructional programs follow the cognitive-only model and the current push for standardized testing has had a negative…

Interest in child development as a knowledge base for early childhood education programs flourished in the 1970s as a result of the theories and philosophies of Jean Piaget and other cognitive developmentalists. During subsequent decades in America, reform movements emphasizing accountability and achievement became a political and social…