The National Science Teaching Association (NSTA) and the "Next Generation Science Standards" ("NGSS") have attempted to make planning easier for teachers by creating a common resource bank, but there is no unit design process specifically created for science teachers in a project- and inquiry-based classroom. Without a common…

As one of the world's major social media hubs dedicated to online education during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Facebook mega-group "Pandemic Pedagogy" provides a panoramic perspective of the key concerns educators and students face amid a public health crisis that forces redefinition of what constitutes effective education. After several…

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) are an explicit document that articulates our pedagogical practices in K-12 science instruction for the United States. The document is an excellent work that describes pedagogy and road maps for building coherence of science principles and student understanding of the Nature of Science. The prescient…

Graciela Chera is hesitant to talk about herself and her classroom. She claims that she is not doing anything special, yet she is clearly making a powerful impact on her students and the English-teaching community in Paraguay. In this article, learn how Graciela Chera balances academic rigor with fun team spirit as she teaches students of all ages…

Established in 1992, Ofsted is championed by government ministers as the guardian of educational standards in schools and colleges. Ofsted has never produced any research on the validity of its inspection judgements. Ofsted has no evidence, other than rising percentages of schools being awarded positive Ofsted grades, to support its assertion that…

Mastery grading is an approach to grading in which students are assigned term grades based on whether they meet certain enumerated objectives, rather than accumulating points. In this note, I describe my experiences using a mastery system, which I call techniques grading, which applies the insights behind the standards-based and specifications…

Teachers need comprehensive support to improve students' literacy. This Policy Update shares how state boards of education can provide this holistic support to improve through: (1) better teacher preparation standards in early literacy; (2) professional development guidance; (3) high-quality literacy coaches and other support professionals; and…

This paper examines how government approaches to education were contested by Aboriginal communities in the late 1930s, through organised political actions designed in part to ensure access to the same standard of education and schooling available to non-Aboriginal people. It explores some of the ways that Aboriginal campaigns for education were…

The Region 2 Comprehensive Center (R2CC) supported the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) in developing new curriculum frameworks for mathematics, science, and English language arts (ELA). This partnership was formed because of 2019 legislation that mandated new statewide academic standards as well as new curriculum frameworks to inform…

To understand standards alignment in the context of curriculum and assessment, it is important to understand what standards are, what curriculum consists of, what assessments are, and what alignment means in the context of curriculum and assessment. Standards indicate what students should know and be able to do within a particular content area,…

Dominant discourses in U.S. History are typically engaged through a settler-colonial framework. Informed by the ubiquity of commercial presentations, cultural tropes, and caricatures--movies, consumer products, and names--the "presentation" of Native Americans tend to focus on incomplete representations that are cast in the past. This…

From 2017 to 2019, the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research and Ingenuity, a Chicago arts education advocacy organization, collaborated to examine the relationship between arts education and social-emotional development. Combining arts-specific research with multidisciplinary literature on child and adolescent development, the…

In alignment with the New Academic Structure, the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education Examination (HKDSE) was launched in 2012 to replace the former Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination (HKCEE) as certification for completion of secondary education, and the Hong Kong Advanced Level Examination (HKALE) as the main credentials for…

Amid the continued growth of online learning--and concerns about its quality--a number of different groups have moved to establish tools, such as rubrics and standards for online course quality. This paper highlights the development of the "Instructional Design Standards for Distance Learning" by the Association for Educational…

For the last 40 years, business leaders, philanthropists, and a host of nonprofit advocacy groups have pushed for higher standards, academic rigor, standardized testing, and newer models of educating children. But, today, some of these reformers are feeling disillusioned and believe that the investments intended to transform education and provide…