Although annual state tests had been federally required since 2001, and the consortia and standards were led by states, the new tests became a focal point of narratives about federal overreach and over-testing. Current wisdom holds that testing has become politically toxic. There are real risks that some states are rolling back advancements in…

School leaders, specifically principals, play a pivotal role in shaping student learning outcomes. The benefits of strong leaders extend beyond academic achievement, such as reductions in absenteeism and exclusionary discipline. While quality principals are critical for creating and sustaining quality schools, the staffing pipeline is facing…

Objective: To examine social connection as a protective factor against exam stress. Participants: 55 undergraduate students at two universities. Methods: Students were evaluated on an exam day for their hardest class and at baseline, a day in a week where they had no exams. Social connection, salivary cortisol, perceived stress, and cognitive…

The Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority (IADA) program, written into the Every Student Succeeds Act, gives up to seven state educational agencies the opportunity to launch innovative assessment pilots in their public schools, with the goal of eventual statewide implementation. As of August 2020, the U.S. Department of Education had…

Pre-apprenticeship programs are a very effective tool to help youth and adults enter a Registered Apprenticeship program. Participants can also use the experience to pursue further training or enter the workforce. The pre-apprenticeship is designed to help youth or adults take a snapshot of their current skills and use that data to address gaps in…

As state budgets are continuously tightened, and state dollars dwindle to cover only the bare necessities, resources must be carefully examined and utilized to increase efficiency and effectiveness; one such area in which higher education institutions must concentrate on allocating and streamlining resources is to increase the retention and…

A Vygotskian approach to assessment is proposed by invoking the distinction between the development of lower and higher psychological functions. Higher psychological functions are specifically human and develop with the use of cultural tools via mediation. Accordingly, a distinction is made between tests that are based on association, which have…

It is both important and challenging to assess transfer of skills learned through coursework and related organizational and societal contributions. The author describes an action research study to determine the effectiveness of a doctoral course in program evaluation. Using Kirkpatrick's (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2006) four-level evaluation…

Special education teachers must have the skills to design and deliver intensive interventions for students with severe and persistent learning and behavioral needs. To ensure effective instruction for these students, preservice preparation programs must provide their teacher candidates with opportunities to learn, apply, and practice intensive…

Background: Dental caries is the most common chronic illness for children. Caries can reduce the quality of life, cause missed classroom hours, and decrease cognition. Strategies to improve children's oral health must be evidence-based, developed, and implemented in consultation with communities. Methods: A community-academic partnership was…

The Association of Public & Land-grant Universities (APLU) launched the "Powered by Publics: Scaling Student Success" initiative in the fall of 2018. The South Eastern Cluster brought together a diverse set of institutions from this region of the country that included several of the larger universities, the North Carolina System…

Preparing to become a music teacher educator is a complex process and one component of this process should be learning to model, demonstrate, and teach assessment practices to preservice music educators. The purpose of this exploratory qualitative study was to discover how, and to what extent, music teacher educators (MTEs) are educated about…

With current education reforms, teachers feel pressure to educate students who can successfully perform on standardized tests. To help prepare students, many teachers access test item banks that contain questions similar to those on the standardized tests. A census study investigated the extent North Carolina agriculture education teachers used…

With a focus on the American context, the study investigates a teacher accountability reform as an expanding assemblage of neoliberal governance by providing an account of physical education teachers who were experiencing an accountability reform that required them to document student learning growth for teacher evaluation. Through stratified…

The North Carolina Teacher Evaluation Process (NC TEP) serves over 100,000 teachers per year throughout the state (U.S. Department of Education, 2021). This process includes formative observations, summative assessments, and formal mentoring to ensure high quality educators. In an attempt to ensure a high-quality evaluation process, hubs at both…