Over the years, as states have sought to incorporate more inclusive and relevant academic standards and curriculum for K-12 students, they have interpreted ethnic studies in both broad and narrow terms. While most states use the term ethnic studies to describe their efforts to incorporate the knowledge and perspectives of traditionally excluded…

Can an academic institution be truly free if it relies on government funding? Federal dollars mean federal mandates, and those mandates grow increasingly draconian. More and more, they stifle debate on open questions, demand denial of verifiable scientific truths, eliminate due process for students accused of misdeeds by other students, or insist…

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…

As states begin to demand more rigor on their high-stakes tests--and the tests evolve to incorporate revised academic standards--many officials are gambling that an initial wave of lower scores will give way to greater student achievement in the future. Changes to statewide tests and subsequent plummeting scores sparked controversy and emergency…

States with an alternate assessment based on modified achievement standards (AA-MAS) that received a flexibility waiver from some of the requirements of No Child Left Behind are required to phase out their use of this assessment. And, on August 23, 2013, the U.S. Department of Education published a proposed rollback of regulation that allowed the…

Federal policy initiatives such as the flexibility waivers for accountability are requiring that states transition away from the use of an alternate assessment based on modified achievement standards (AA-MAS). It is expected that those students who had participated in that assessment will instead participate in the state's general assessment (or a…

Improving teacher preparation is critical to long-term improvement in teacher quality. More than 200,000 new teachers enter classrooms each year. Increasing student enrollment, the retirement of baby boom generation teachers, and high attrition in their first five years (between 40 and 50 percent of new teachers leave the profession) have…

This study is a mixed-methods text analysis of African American representation within K-12 U.S. History content standards treating the revolutionary era, the early U.S. republic, the Civil War era, and Reconstruction. The states included in the analysis are Michigan, New Jersey, South Carolina, and Virginia. The analysis finds that the reviewed…

This article summarizes the similarities and differences in grade-level learning expectations for fourth grade as described in state curriculum standards. (Contains 3 tables.)

Now that all 50 states and the District of Columbia are building statewide longitudinal data systems, the next step is to ensure that the information in these systems is used to improve student learning. The Data Quality Campaign (DQC) has identified 10 actions that states can take to ensure that the right data are available and accessible and…

By adding courses in math, science, English, foreign languages, and geography to their admission standards, colleges and universities in many states are fostering further fragmentation of high school curricula and forcing some schools to add class periods or short-change vocational, music, and art students. Michigan, Oregon, Colorado, and New York…

Research indicates that thoughtful technology use can positively influence learning process inside and outside the classroom, and one-to-one computing has been gaining popularity. Although some view such initiatives as passing, others look at the mounting research and see opportunities to reshape the nature of instruction and learning. This brief…

Measuring History complements the cases presented in Wise Social Studies Practices (Yeager & Davis, 2005). Yeager and Davis highlight the rich and ambitious teaching that can occur in the broad context of state-level testing. In this book, the chapter authors and I bring the particular state history tests more to the fore and examine how…