Does the Common Core State Standards' focus on informational text mean that teachers must teach fiberglass installation manuals and the minutes of National Reserve Board meetings? No, responds literacy expert Timothy Shanahan. "I've pored over the lists of exemplary texts suggested by the standards, and I've not been able to…

High school is boring, writes the author, in part because lock-step diploma requirements crowd out personalized and engaged learning. It is also boring because current content standards are based on traditional, subject-area notions of curriculum instead of on the essential question, What do students need to be well prepared for their adult lives?…

Professional assessment organizations almost universally endorse the use of multiple measures for making education decisions. In practice, however, the concept of multiple measures is defined and applied in many different ways, depending on how we answer two questions--What counts as a "measure"? and How are the multiple measures…

Because they focus on the quality of instruction, teacher evaluations can be powerful catalysts for teacher and school improvement. But today, the typical teacher evaluation consists of a single, fleeting classroom visit by an administrator untrained in evaluation. Often he or she wields a checklist of classroom conditions and teacher behaviors…

The author, director of the University of Chicago School Mathematics Project, tackles the following question: Should the United States have national standards with teeth, that is, a single set of standards tied to assessments and agreed to by the states? Proponents advance five main arguments for implementing such a standard. In his rebuttal, the…

For many, the dominant model of curriculum development in science includes generating a topic, clarifying science content, identifying activities associated with the topic, and figuring out an assessment. Unfortunately, this approach tends to overemphasize activities and underemphasize mastery of science concepts and the process of scientific…