The actions of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards with regard to national teaching standards and an associated examination are critiqued. The board was established on the basis of a recommendation by an advisory council of the Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy. The board, which is composed of politicians, business…

Plas y Brenin, (British) National Mountain Centre, was evaluated through surveys of users of outdoor residential courses, nonusers from relevant sports, and experts. The center's most highly rated aspect was "setting standards for training," but some educators suggested that the center's concentration on technical expertise in sports…

Within the next decade, national standards describing essential outcomes in various school subjects could become the glue holding together curriculum frameworks and guides, textbook adoption, staff development, and student assessment. This article discusses confusion over definitions and intentions, raises questions about delivery and assessment…

In December 1992, the National Committee on Science Education Standards and Assessment (NCSESA) discussed preliminary working documents addressing Science for All, an ambitious plan to develop comprehensive science education standards by 1994. The science standards will define the understanding level that all students--regardless of background,…

Through its recent attempts to establish national curriculum standards, the National Collegiate Athletic Association is creating enormous problems for high school students, parents, and educators. Good grades are no longer enough. The NCAA has opted to specify content of acceptable high school courses to standardize college-entrance requirements…

Voluntary national tests based on national and international benchmarks can be powerful tools for change in all schools. The tests would help monitor students' progress at two key educational junctures--fourth-grade reading and eighth-grade math. Tests would be based on the National Assessment of Education Progress content frameworks and…

Traces origins of competence-based approaches to management training in England, as a followup to implementing the Teacher Training Agency's National Standards for Headteachers, which inspired the National Professional Qualification for Headship (NPQH) and the Headteachers' Leadership and Management Programme (HEADLAMP). (Contains 81 references.)…

The underlying question for the educational community is to determine the effect of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards on creating a higher quality professional who, in turn, imparts knowledge so that their students are better educated to compete in a global economy. Thus, does the attainment of National Board Certification by…

In 2004, the Consortium on Chicago School Research (CCSR) provided The Chicago Public Education Fund (The Fund) with an initial look at the performance of Leadership and Urban Network for Chicago (LAUNCH) and principals and teachers certified by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), two leadership programs that were just…

The National Governors' Association is urging states to develop a standardized cohort graduation rate definition and to develop data systems with quality data that can in turn be used to produce a reliable indicator. This paper is an examination of one state's graduation rate using the cohort method. The statistics generated are compared to a…

Problems of scale typically arise when comparing test score trends, gaps, and gap trends across different tests. To overcome some of these difficulties, we can express the difference between the observed test performance of two groups with graphs or statistics that are metric-free (i.e., invariant under positive monotonic transformations of the…

Newborn screening has existed as a state-based public health service since the early 1960s. Every state and most territorial jurisdictions have comprehensive newborn screening programs in place, but in the United States a national newborn screening policy does not exist. This results in different administrative infrastructures, screening…

Most states do not offer reciprocity for other state assessment tests. That practice has an adverse effect on school-aged, dependent children of military service members. President Clinton's 1997 solution was a national standardized assessment test for public school students. Critics stated it would cost $96,000,000 to deliver the test. Florida…

This book discusses questions regarding mathematics education in U.S. schools and presents individual reviews on the concerns about student competency and academic achievement in mathematics. The reviews focus on school mathematics programs in pre-kindergarten through eighth grades. Contents include: (1) "Looking at Mathematics and…

The content and objectives of the Pacesetter Spanish course, developed by the College Board, are compared with those of the "National Standards for Foreign Language Learning: Preparing for the Twenty-First Century," published in 1996 and are generally adopted by the foreign language teaching community. The comparison begins with the…