Tennessee is one of 15 states participating in a pilot program to explore new ways to measure school performance under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Under NCLB, states are held accountable for ensuring that sufficient numbers of schools' students are meeting state proficiency standards and improving schools that fail to measure up. In…

In 2009-10, New Leaders for New Schools partnered with the Perspectives Charter School Network in Chicago to pilot an innovative leadership development program for principals. The program is part of the Effective Practice Incentive Community (EPIC) initiative, which was created by New Leaders in 2006 to identify, reward, and share effective…

This article is a case study of compensatory education as it was developed and implemented by an innovative urban school principal in the early 1960s. I argue that while the compensatory education movement was often marred by pejorative-sounding language and inegalitarian ideas, especially as it was shaped and expanded by policy makers and…

Lyndon State College is a small, four-year public college in the rural Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. In an effort to improve its first-year retention rate, two years ago the authors began to analyze which students return to Lyndon for their second year of college. They found that more than 60% of the students were first-generation college students…

This policy brief examines standards-based approaches that hold promise for shaping a common vision of skilled teaching commensurate with the national goal of preparing all students for college and careers. Numerous studies confirm that teachers are the most significant school-based factor in improving student achievement, particularly for the…

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has invested in the development and dissemination of high-quality instructional and formative assessment tools to support teachers' incorporation of the Core Common State Standards (CCSS) into their classroom instruction. Literacy experts have developed a framework and a set of templates that teachers can use…

The Academic, Personal and Professional Learning (APPL) model of support for student nurses was developed and implemented as a pilot project in the Faculty of Health and Social Care Sciences of a university in response to a number of internal and external drivers. The common theme across these drivers was the enhancement of the social, academic…

As President Bush nears the end of his tenure, his administration is putting its final stamp on the No Child Left Behind Act and trying to lay the groundwork for the law's future. This article reports on the latest effort of President Bush's administration that will allow as many as 10 states to create alternative interventions for schools that…

Laptops have been shown to improve 21st century skills such as life and career skills, learning and innovation skills, and group collaboration, but how does this ever-present technology affect the thinking of today's "screenager"? Through an analysis of focus groups and surveys with students in 1:1 initiatives across North Carolina,…

In late 2007, Jobs for the Future (JFF), working with the Delta Project on Postsecondary Costs, Productivity and Accountability, launched "Investing in Student Success", a one-year pilot program. The pilot, conceived of as part of the "Making Opportunity Affordable" initiative and funded by Walmart Foundation and Lumina Foundation for Education,…

High-stakes assessments have encouraged educators to ignore the needs of the top performers. Therefore, the Oakwood School District decided to implement a mathematics pilot enrichment program in order to meet the needs of the advanced mathematics students. As a result, this study used quantitative data to determine if there was a significant…

This review examined a study designed to evaluate whether the Achievement Challenge Pilot Project, a performance-pay program for teachers, improved the academic achievement of elementary school students. Study authors reported higher student test score gains for students in schools that implemented the performance- pay program than for students in…

These proceedings contain the papers of the 13th International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA 2016), October 28-30, 2016, which has been organized by the International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS), co-organized by the University of Mannheim, Germany, and endorsed by the…

Student retention in online education is a concern for students, faculty and administration. Retention rates are 20% lower in online courses than in traditional face-to-face courses. As part of an integration and engagement strategy, a face-to-face orientation was added to an online undergraduate business information systems course to examine its…

This article reports on Massachusetts' recent decision to offer charterlike freedom to four of its lowest-performing schools. This decision has renewed debate about the role autonomy plays in school improvement: Should it be earned through good performance, or given as a vital tool for improvement? Is it risky to extend it to struggling schools?…