Argues that international assessments that show U.S. educational inferiority are unwarranted, reviews the history of these assessments, and evaluates the major explanations of the achievement differences. It also examines the theoretical and empirical underpinnings of curriculum-centered explanations because of their relevance to school reform.…

Presents seven curriculum guides for art, reading/language arts, science, and social studies. Includes library media skills objectives, curriculum (subject area) objectives, grade levels, resources, instructional role, activities and procedures for completion, evaluations, and follow-ups. (AEF)

Describes the Australian Language Certificates project, an initiative which provides incentives to students studying second languages by offering external recognition of achievement and enhancing the status of secondary school language learning. It includes listening and reading assessment tasks in six languages. Students receive certificates…

Hostility towards intelligence tests is based on perception that such instruments are decisive in placing ethnic and linguistic minority students in ineffective educational placements. It is imperative that discussions about intelligence and cognition be guided by the presupposition that there are certain cross-cultural skills all students must…

The Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) compared mathematics and science scores across 41 countries. American students performed well in science and mathematics in the fourth grade but fell behind their international peers by the eighth grade. Concludes that differences are due to unfocused curriculum, a static conception of…

"U.S. News & World Report" has published a ranking of the top 50 MBA programs since 1990. Today, there are more than a half dozen different rankings of MBA programs and they are so popular and powerful, that prospective students, alumni, legislators, college presidents, deans, and admissions officers wait with bated breath to see where their…

The "achievement gap" is a well-documented problem in schools. Evidence of an academic performance problem requires that educators respond quickly and differently to signs of academic failure. As the lessons of the achievement gap suggest that historical decisions about when to intervene with performance support are flawed, performance…

The Socratic Method has impacted thinkers and instructors from Hegel, who moved through the negation to the negation of the negation, to Marx, who viewed history through dialectical materialism, to C.C. Langdell, who introduced case law as an innovative method to study law as a science, to present-day professors who use this method to compel…

Analyzes the results of previous studies that examined the effects of teaching test-taking skills to elementary school children. Concludes that training in test-taking skills is differentially effective for various subgroups of children, longer training programs are more effective, and training is more effective in the upper elementary grades than…

Argues that current grading practices in some schools lack consistency in several critical areas, including criteria for failure, absolute or relative standards, and motivation of slower students. Policies are suggested that will help educators develop fairer and more humane marking systems. (TE)

Discusses societal changes that may have contributed to increasing average achievement levels (especially in mathematics) for Black students. Considers the long-term beneficial effects of school desegregation. (GC)

Describes the development and implementation of an administrator merit pay plan for the North Salem, New York, public schools. The plan includes provisions for salary adjustments according to the quality of service (from "unsatisfactory" to "outstanding") and three sets of materials for administrator evaluaiton. (JBM)

Based on an interview study of 138 kindergarten children, the data for the most part did not support Bernstein's ideas. Speech style indicators did not cluster into elaborated and restricted variants. Neither social control strategies nor school achievement scores were differentially related to elaborated and restricted variants. (PD)

Reviews a study designed to determine the effects of providing special education teachers with computer programs to aid them in developing appropriate math education programs for their students. The experiment demonstrated that math learning rate could be accelerated, but not whether the accelerated rate could be maintained. Thirteen references…

Fifty-nine undergraduate students, divided into two groups to compare the instructional motivational effects of auto-tutorial and conventional instruction, were tested for achievement via performance (Ac), achievement via independence (Ai), and internal-external locus of control. Significant interaction was found between Ac and the two methods of…