This study examines implementation of college-and-career-ready (CCR) education standards across five school districts in Ohio, Texas, California, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. Drawing on the policy attributes theory, we found that the specificity of districts' approaches to two long-recognized policy levers, curriculum and professional…

This article provides information about the value of a core course in business law and why it remains essential to business education. It goes on to identify highly ranked undergraduate business programs that require one or more business law courses. Using "Business Week" and "US News and World Report" to identify top…

Delaware County Community College provides library services to its branch campus community members by stationing a librarian at a campus 5 to 20 hours each week, without any more library infrastructure than an Internet-enabled computer on the school network. Faculty and students have reacted favorably to the increased presence of librarians.…

So what if we just turned every course in our Superintendent's Program into a form of practicum? This question was asked by two former superintendents in response to nationwide calls to reform school leadership training and who found themselves leading a university executive leadership program. It triggered a comprehensive redesign of their…

In an effort to increase student readiness for college and career, many States have adopted new academic standards encouraged by education reform advocates. These standards are commonly referred to as the Common Core Standards. Schools from States that have adopted the Common Core Standards have been compelled to significantly restructure their…

At the beginning of every school year at Park Forest Elementary School (PFE), it is customary for teachers to invite their students to participate in establishing guidelines for behavior and citizenship in their respective classrooms. Teacher Lorraine McGarry and principal Donnan Stoicovy began the 2012-13 school year, however, by taking this…

This study evaluated the effect of online instruction on the academic achievement of K--12 students in ten states as measured by the percentage of proficient students in reading and mathematics at the school level. We used publicly available data provided by the Department of Education in Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania,…

In higher education's environment of accountability, the development and assessment of student learning outcomes (SLOs) are driven by both external stakeholder requirements for accreditation and internal institutional pressures to demonstrate student learning as the core function of universities and colleges. This paper presents a framework to…

There have been many significant changes in education over the last fifty years, but few have been as swift and all-encompassing as the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Discussed and debated everywhere, and now implemented in many states, the CCSS initiative set out to transform our nation's K-12 educational system by providing clear…

The first PA Forward Information Literacy Summit was held in State College at the Pennsylvania State University, University Park campus, on Wednesday, July 24, 2013. This summit brought together K-12 and academic librarians from Pennsylvania to discuss current issues in information literacy. This text is a transcript of a discussion between Ellysa…

Media literacy, the abilities "to access, analyze, evaluate, and communicate information in a variety of forms" (NAMLE), is necessary to help people understand the information presented to them and make informed decisions. However, despite decades of work to include media literacy education in academic learning (Hobbs and Jensen 2009),…

Data from 17 recovery high schools suggest programs are dynamic and vary in enrollment, fiscal stability, governance, staffing, and organizational structure. Schools struggle with enrollment, funding, lack of primary treatment accessibility, academic rigor, and institutional support. Still, for adolescents having received treatment for substance…

Motivated by the multiple-measures clause of recent federal policy regarding student eligibility for alternate assessments based on modified academic achievement standards (AA-MASs), this study examined how scores or combinations of scores from a diverse set of assessments predicted students' end-of-year proficiency status on statewide achievement…

STEM--shorthand for "science, technology, engineering, and mathematics"--has been part of the school improvement discussion for more than a decade, as educational leaders and policy makers have underscored the importance of these areas in an internationally competitive, 21st-century economy. But building and implementing programs that…

Elected state leaders often prioritize economic prosperity and competitiveness, which provides an important opportunity too rarely taken for investing in early education. In 2003, Pennsylvania recognized the connection between early education and the economy, and smartly embraced early learning as part of its economic prosperity and…