A state legislator who played a key role in enacting the nation's first charter school law in Minnesota tells the story of shaping the ideas and the bill. She now looks for ways that charter schools can coexist with traditional public schools to deliver a better education for all children.

A striking convergence of research, documentation, commentary, and policy in the past five years strongly suggests that an almost exclusive focus on academic knowledge and skills is an incomplete solution. Additional behaviors, skills, and mindsets--sometimes called metacognitive skills or 21st-century skills--are just as necessary for academic…

New York City's Department of Education offers a course called Digital Literacies, in which overage and undercredited high school students in more than 60 schools develop key skills needed for life after high school, whether it entails further education, employment, or, more commonly, both. With a "blended learning" design, it is more…

As students move up through the grades, the academic demands on them increase, and a great many of those increases come in the form of reading. The academic tasks students encounter in the upper elementary grades, and even more so in secondary school, involve a great deal of reading in support of learning new and complicated content. As the…

Explains the Kohlberg moral stages in moral development, discusses the aims of moral and civic education, then describes the continuing experimental work at the Harvard Center for Moral Education. (Author/DW)

Describes the Southwest Texas Program for Improving Basic Skills Instruction in the Secondary Schools. It promotes a thoughtful, inquiry-oriented dialog between a university and six participating schools that encourages teachers to become more effective decision-makers. (MD)

An assistant professor approaches students' unconventional research topics (like crystal healing) as ordinary research endeavors, asking students if they want their work to be credible, what academic discipline they plan to use, what research question should be asked, and what resources are necessary to understand the topic. (MLH)

Discusses five key concepts of career-education movement and their implications for education reform: Work, students and teachers as workers, infusion, collaboration, and career development. Also discusses studies evaluating the effectiveness of career-education programs. (PKP)

Summarizes three reasons for attending school (social, personal, and utilitarian) amd focuses on what should comprise utilitarian education for noncollege-bound high school students. Advocates curricula incorporating the skills, knowledge, values, and habits--especially continued willingness to learn--that will benefit students throughout…

What disturbs teachers most is not students' ignorance about our culture and history, but their unwillingness or inability to think critically about subjects that ostensibly interest them. Teachers often exacerbate this problem by oversimplifying complex issues, using "defensive" or controlling teaching strategies, and squelching debate.…

Many practitioners and policy makers view personalized school environments as a means to promote student commitment to school and engagement in learning. Personalization also rewards teachers and encourages their commitment and accountability. A personalized environment is the product of deliberate, strategic choices about organizational…

Proposes six principles to follow when teaching students to think. Aimed at teaching thinking as an indivisible process rather than as a set of discrete skills, the principles involve active learning, the articulation of thinking, intuitive understanding, structuring courses developmentally, motivating learning, and establishing a positive…

Outlines a fictitious but ideal school in which staff work cooperatively and are encouraged to develop their talents. (MD)

Mean scores on the Defining Issues Test indicate that the moral reasoning capacity of some preservice teachers is below that of some junior high students and that the capacity of a much larger portion of preservice teachers is below that of many senior high students. (Author/IRT)

As teenagers mature, they seek to move away from the adult community's normative pressures. A 10-year survey of adolescents in 10 communities found more congruence than conflict between parent and adolescent world views. Seattle, Washington's innovative youth charter offers an ideal way to map out adult and adolescent roles. Includes nine…