This guide is designed to give the student helpful information about Arizona's Instrument To Measure the Standards (AIMS) for grade 5. The guide provides examples of the type of questions students see on AIMS and explains how items are scored. It does not teach what the student needs to know to do well on AIMS, but it will help the student know…

Applying the educational experiences of Arizona as a backdrop, this opinion paper discusses, quite broadly, reform of public education. In Arizona, academic standards have been judged the best in the nation by the Fordham Foundation; to measure academic progress, the state uses only the Stanford 9 test; there has been public school open enrollment…

The Arizona Early Learning Standards have been developed to provide a framework for the planning of quality learning experiences for all children 3 to 5 years of age. The standards cover a broad range of skill development and provide a useful instructional foundation for children from diverse backgrounds and with diverse abilities. The standards…

This document is comprised of four booklets (in Spanish and English versions) providing Arizona parents with information on the Arizona Academic Standards and describing how parents can support their children's learning. The first booklet describes kindergarten as the readiness level during which parents help their children prepare to learn and…

In an effort to provide a sound basis for educational accountability for preschool programs, the Arizona Early Childhood Education (ECE) Standards were developed as a framework for literacy-based programs for 3- and 4-year-olds and to provide parents with a basic understanding of indicators of early learning. These standards, to be adopted by…

This guide is designed to give the student helpful information about Arizona's Instrument To Measure the Standards (AIMS) for grade 8. The guide provides examples of the type of questions students see on AIMS and explains how items are scored. It does not teach what the student needs to know to do well on AIMS, but it will help the student know…

Arizona's high school dropout rate is nearly double the national average of 9 percent, with a significant number of its dropouts being students from economically and socially disadvantaged ethnic minority backgrounds. The Arizona Minority Education Policy Analysis Center conducted a series of roundtable discussions with school administrators,…

The AzTEC Mathematics Project (AMP) is a statewide partnership among Arizona's Regents universities and state community colleges, partner school districts, and economic communities. AzTec is committed to preparing highly qualified K-12 mathematics and science teachers. AMP targeted Native American teachers and teachers of Native American students…

At the heart of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is the call for all students to be "proficient" in reading and mathematics by 2014. Yet the law expects each state to define proficiency as it sees fit and design its own tests. This study investigated three research questions related to this policy: (1) How consistent are various…

This paper examines some impacts of basic skills proficiency testing of teachers in Arizona. A discussion of some legal issues involved in teacher proficiency testing is presented. Specific cases are cited which illustrate the fact that the courts have ruled that testing must show "job-relatedness" and a "rational basis for…

In 1990, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) included a Trial State Assessment (TSA); for the first time in the NAEP's history, voluntary state-by-state assessments were made. The sample was designed to represent the 8th grade public school population in a state or territory. In 1996, 44 states, the District of Columbia, Guam,…

Since September 1995, the Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico-Rural Systemic Initiative (UCAN-RSI) has promoted systemic reform to improve science, technology, and mathematics education for all rural students in its states. Initially, UCAN targeted 159,000 students in over 430 rural, primarily American Indian or Hispanic, communities. These…

Over the past 6 years, Arizona State University West (ASU West), located in Phoenix, Arizona, has developed an Early Childhood program that features curricula based on the National Education Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS-T; International Society for Technology in Education [ISTE], 2000), National Technology Standards for Students…

This document presents eight lesson plans designed to teach self-determination and Arizona academic standards to students with disabilities in grades K-12. The lesson plans include: (1) an oral language lesson plan for students with learning disabilities in grades 1-2; (2) a reading acquisition lesson that teaches color words to students with…

This collection of lesson plans is designed to help students with disabilities meet Arizona academic standards and learn different types of self-determination skills. Lesson plans are provided for students in grades K-12 with different disabilities and address: (1) oral language, including identifying homonyms; (2) reading acquisition, including…