Richmond Ballet's Mind in Motion program offers selected students an opportunity to take group dance lessons during 4th grade. Time taken away from academic instruction did not have a negative effect on standardized test scores and students reported feelings of greater success in school, more focus on school work, and greater ability to work with…

A study finds that American students are engaged with lessons only 54 percent of the time, due to external preoccupations and uninspired instruction. The Heritage Foundation's "No Excuses" report makes misleading correlations between scores, phonics, and socioeconomic variables. Florida housing prices reflect letter grades assigned to…

Demands for a differentiated curriculum for gifted students raise implementation and evaluation issues. One approach is to change both content and learned thinking strategies. There are four methods of content differentiation: acceleration, enrichment, sophistication, and novelty. To determine a program's effectiveness, there must be evidence of…

Student performance will continue to drop as long as traditional school management telegraphs the message that low-quality work is acceptable. Nothing of high quality, including school work, can be measured by standardized machine-scored tests. By using control theory, both student and teacher workers can be more effectively managed without…

Argues that reliance on the outcome of quantitative standardized tests to assess student performance is misplaced quest for certainty in an uncertain world. Reviews and lauds Canadian teacher-devised qualitative diagnostic tool, "Profiles of Student Behaviors," composed of 20 behavioral patterns in student knowledge, attitude, and skill.…

For all the fractious debate in America over the state of public schools, those on the political Left and Right agree that the "achievement gaps" are real. But what do most people mean when they say "achievement gaps"? Gaps in standardized test scores, of course. The gaps consist of the differences between the test scores of…