Context: The context for this article is the public response to the federal role in the oversight and enforcement of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). This response has been characterized by a tension between concerns about federal interference in public education and support for…

The authors review nineteen evaluations and reports dealing with alternative schools, examining the structure of the research, findings, and recommendations. In an examination of the research methodology, weaknesses are described and suggestions for improving the quality of future research are made. (MJB)

The educational system has not been particularly successful in teaching thinking skills. In order to do so, it is necessary to identify what thinking skills are and understand their development. Current research and design of future research are discussed, as is the problem of transfer. (MT)

Background: Although preservice teachers bring well-established views of teaching to their teacher education programs, Tabachnick and Zeichner (1984) claimed that it is possible to amend preservice teachers' views. They portrayed the learning of teachers as a negotiated and interactive process rather than as one that is predetermined by teachers'…

Background/Context: In the field of educational research, conventional wisdom holds that primary-level schooling, specifically literacy acquisition, promotes economic mobility for individuals and economic development for the nation. This belief is rooted in human capital theory, the causal argument claiming that state investment in schooling or…

Background/Context: With the growth of the small-school movement, many urban districts have restructured large underperforming high schools into new, small high schools or schools-within-a-school designed to engage adolescents in rigorous and meaningful learning along with strong teacher-student relationships. In the case of this study, the…

The growing population of English language learners (ELLs) in U.S. schools and the low academic achievement of many of these learners have been the subject of much debate. A significant related issue is determining the sources of ELLs' difficulty, namely, understanding the distinction between learning disabilities (LD) and learning difficulties…

Background/Context: Although prior research shows that the nature and extent of private tutoring practices vary significantly from country to country, differences between Eastern and Western countries in terms of their cultural and institutional aspects of private tutoring choice have not been closely examined. We need to bridge the gap by…

Background/Context: In recent years, state legislatures, state education departments, and advocacy groups in over 30 states have sponsored education adequacy studies, which aim to determine objectively the amount of funding needed to provide all students a meaningful opportunity for an adequate education. Not surprisingly, because of their growing…

This paper calls into question prevailing approaches to educational research (contrived experiments) and proposes a new perspective in method, theory, and substance (natural experiments). (MM)

Background: Much research has sought to investigate emotions and forms of emotion management among teachers worldwide, including the connection between educational change and teacher emotion; the association between the culture of teaching and teachers' emotional experience within parent-teacher interactions; the link between teacher emotion and…