Interested in bringing the benefits of the arts as integral to quality education for all children, in 2004 the Ford Foundation launched the National Arts Education Initiative, a seven-year demonstration in nine communities across the United States. Building from arts education programs that serve "pockets" of children, Ford investments…

While great progress has been made by the international community to promote inclusive education for all children, regardless of race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, gender or disability, many countries still continue to marginalize and exclude students in educational systems across the globe. High-stakes assessments in market-driven economies…

For almost a century, schools have assigned students to various groups or classes based on their perceived academic ability. Referred to as Tracking, in the United States, and Streaming, in England, this organizational differentiation very often results in unequal access to knowledge and the differential treatment of students. Proponents of…

The purpose of this article is to examine online learning at the macro level in terms of its impact on American K-12 and higher education. The authors draw on six years of data that they have collected through national studies of online learning in American education as well as related research to do a critical and balanced analysis of the…

What constitutes a high quality teacher education program and what standards teacher candidates should meet before receiving their teaching credential? This volume advances deep understanding of the nature and sources of policy affecting the preparation of teachers in the U.S. and the conflicts or interconnections of these policies with the…

The standards movement in the US has ballooned over the past generation of education reforms to the extent that standards have become a prominent feature of the educational architecture. Most curriculum planning is informed by local, state, and/or interstate content area standards. While the 1980s central focus on the international competitiveness…

As part of an American effort to reduce poverty, national organizations, like members of the Learning First Alliance, must make a vigorous federal, state and local commitment to improving public schools. Only such shared commitment can move them towards a common vision for the public education system they need. In the past decade, however, the…

Discussions of school and teacher quality now occur regularly in the United States: The ways in which teachers are licensed and assessed are frequently subjects of heated debates. Most concepts of teacher and school effectiveness focus narrowly on educators' subject area proficiency and students' performance on high-stakes assessments. Missing in…

Institutional reforms have been proposed to improve the delivery and financing of education. School Based Management (SBM) is one such institutional reform where decision making is transferred to the school level. Funds are transferred directly to the school and parents, along with teachers and the principal, allocate and oversee the use of…

This study investigated the relationship between families' perceptions of supports and services and family quality of life (FQOL) for families of children with deafblindness, and the potential of satisfaction with family-professional partnerships and child age as moderators of this relationship. The study was guided by the Unified Theory of Family…

In 1991, the Child and Family Policy Center (CFPC) titled its first Iowa Kids Count Data Book "World-Class Futures." That year, Iowa ranked eighth among states in the national Kids Count Data Book, and the report warned against complacence. "World-Class Futures" drew comparisons between Iowa's child outcomes and those for some…

This article explores school and community leaders' beliefs about standards-based reform and the purposes of local schooling in a single rural community in the western United States. The study used interviews of 11 community and school leaders in the community. Participants engage in a balancing act between serving local interests and satisfying…

A diploma mill is commonly recognized as an entity that will award a degree for substandard academic work. However, there is no universal agreement among different higher education institutions as to what constitutes minimum standard academic work or minimum knowledge and skills required of graduates. The author states that many of the negative…

The purpose of this paper is to explore the question concerning the benefits of school voucher programs and whether or not they can help to reverse the educational deteriorization that has taken place in the public school system. Several authors and studies were referenced to permit an even exchange of both sides of the issue. The result was a…

The quality of qualitative research has been subject to considerable criticism recently, partly driven by the development of an international movement for "evidence-based policy and practice." In the United States, randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are posited by some as the best way of producing reliable research knowledge. Also,…