Exploring explored principals' and teachers' perceptions concerning the role of play in early childhood programs was this quantitative inquiry. All early childhood participants identified play as a learning tool but noted it was being eliminated from the curriculum due to high stake accountability. There was a significant difference between…

Current trends in public education towards increased standardization and accountability through the use of high-stakes testing have limited both the amount of time spent teaching social studies and the quality of social studies instruction in American elementary schools. With these nationwide trends in mind, this article explores the roles and…

This paper uses Hochberg and Desimone's (2010) theoretical framework for professional development (PD) in accountability contexts to interpret two teachers' experiences in a PD program focused on historical inquiry, analysis, and argumentation, within an urban school district marked by stringent accountability pressures tied to high-stakes test…

The purpose of this study is to understand how a cohort of teaching residents' beliefs and articulations about teaching for social justice change over time from before entering residency to their first year of teaching. In doing so, we conduct an examination of their conceptions of and beliefs about teaching for social justice over multiple…

This article examines mathematics opportunities at two urban high schools in the context of high-stakes standardized testing. Case studies were conducted at two urban high schools in low-income neighborhoods. Data includes opportunities in mathematics offered to students at the school level, in terms of mathematics course sequencing, and at the…

The Texas Projection Measure (TPM) has grown out of the state's need to meet the requirements of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). An examination of the state's method of predicting 8th grade mathematics scores reveals that several factors have been ignored in the process of developing the model, including assumptions in its underlying statistical…

Many test-based accountability systems, including the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), place great weight on the numbers of students who score at or above specified proficiency levels in various subjects. Accountability systems based on these metrics often provide incentives for teachers and principals to target children near current…

With the current demands for greater accountability, schools must often choose between short-term responses that lead to improved scores or longer-term efforts to build student achievement and ensure quality teaching. This paper considers ways in which the arguments on either side of this issue manifest themselves in particular schools. The…

Accountability and performance incentive plans in education are compromised by goal distortion, gaming, and corruption. Education policy makers who design such plans have paid insufficient attention to similar experiences in other fields. This paper describes institutions in health care, job training and welfare administration, and in the private…

This paper examines the current status of standards and assessment in California, focusing on the system's successes and failures, and on how professors of educational administration can be involved and of assistance to administrators and teachers in this endeavor. At this time, the California accountability system and other mandated factors have…

Uses of tests and assessments as key elements in 5 waves of educational reform during the past 50 years are reviewed. These waves include the role of tests in tracking and selection emphasized in the 1950s, the use of tests for program accountability in the 1960s, minimum competency testing programs of the 1970s, school and district accountability…

The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of using the principle of "superposition of states" (commonly illustrated by Schrodinger's Cat experiment) to understand the process of using standardized testing to measure a student's learning. Comparisons from literature, neuroscience, and Schema Theory will be used to expound upon the…

This paper addresses the debate over high school graduation rates, examining how the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) has redirected attention toward graduation rates. It introduces provisions of the NCLB pertaining to high school graduation, discussing implications from a measurement perspective, and presents strategies for developing a…

This paper pursues the evolving relationships between Foucauldian understandings of surveillance (the disciplinary observation of the many by the few) and Debordian notions of spectacle (the disciplinary observation of the few by the many). It argues that education today must be understood according to a setting in which spectacle and surveillance…

This study compared high and low performing schools in a state secondary physical education high stakes assessment and accountability program. The South Carolina Physical Education Assessment Program (SCPEAP) required teachers to assess samples of students on competency across four state mandated performance indicators. This study examined the…