This article reports on a study of Illinois school board presidents' perspectives on teacher tenure. It begins with an historical overview of the development of teacher tenure from its roots in the 1880s civil service legislation through the establishment of teacher tenure in the United States to an examination of current teacher tenure laws and…

Addresses three questions: (1) What is high quality geography teaching in higher education; (2) how can high quality teaching be identified and evaluated; and (3) to what extent are faculty and departments held accountable for teaching quality? Explores how the answers to these questions vary between the United Kingdom and the United States. (CMK)

The passage of the No Child Left Behind Act and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 2001 emphasized the growing concern in the United States that a need exists for highly qualified teachers, if children are to have a chance at succeeding in the 21st century. These pieces of legislation and philosophical change to learning have opened the…

Assessing Teachers' of Religion in U.S. Post Secondary Education is a review of religion's various meanings, how it is taught, where it is taught and how it is evaluated on the post secondary campuses of the United States. Kollar reports the results of a National Survey of chairs and directors of all the schools, departments, and programs of…

A study group from a Wyoming school and nearby university delve into the Japanese process of lesson study, learning the differences between the Japanese and U.S. education systems and how the process can work--and does not work--in an American context. The group's understandings highlight ways that lesson study can be adapted for use in the United…

Summarizes trends in competency testing for teachers in the United States. Points out the strong public support for this testing and the problems with predicting teaching success from test results. Concludes that teacher competency testing in Canada, currently less prevalent than in the United States, will increase dramatically. (JHZ)

How public school teachers are paid in the U.S. has been a controversial issue for many years. Critics of the traditional system, in which teachers are paid on the basis of years of experience and educational attainment, claim that it does not reward or promote good teaching as fairly as systems that tie pay to performance: having certain skills,…

The report presents the findings of an investigation into the trends and issues concerning accreditation of professionals and institutions of higher education in the United States. In late 1988 and early 1989, the study examined the accreditation of courses in nursing, engineering, and teacher education, and the accreditation of institutions in…

Assessing importance of various criteria used to evaluate faculty members for tenure, promotion, and salary increases, compared with responses of professional schools and social sciences departments, surveyed in 1977 by John A. Centra. Thirteen references are provided. (EJS)

The 2009 edition of the "State Teacher Policy Yearbook" is the National Council on Teacher Quality's (NCTQ's) third annual review of state laws, rules and regulations that govern the teaching profession. This year's report is a comprehensive analysis of the full range of each state's teacher policies, measured against a realistic…

Japanese school management should consider more broad-based, active participation in school board policymaking and should democratize school board-school relationships by adopting the lay-control principle. Both U.S. and Japanese schools should improve the exercise of appropriate administrator leadership. Japanese schools are evaluated on a…

Modernising the teaching profession has become one of the main goals of contemporary educational system reform. The evaluation of teachers has been integral to the new teacher quality policies and programs. This article provides a comparative and critical analysis of the evaluations that teachers now confront during their professional careers.…

Traditional methods of paying and evaluating teachers in the United States are longstanding, but discussions about changing these systems to support teacher quality and student achievement goals are becoming more common. Efforts to make significant changes to these programs can be difficult and take many years to design, gain approval, and…

There is increasing pressure to evaluate and document the capabilities of students exiting teacher education programs. A professional portfolio can serve as an effective tool for documenting this process. Faculty wishing to institute portfolios in pre-service teacher assessment should be aware of the difficulties that arise during discourse and…