This document presents school principals' points of view on school and student improvement, using the real life experiences and practices of principals within Chicago's schools that have over the past few years shown the most improvement. Principals from 32 schools discussed their leadership style and strategies that contributed to school and…

Over the past 30 years, Florida's 500 middle schools have become more sizeable, racially segregated, and security conscious. Other features include interdisciplinary team organization, warring curricula, block schedules, integrated technology, inclusion, ability grouping, corporate practices, and female and minority principals committed to…

Focusing on national policy and practice, this paper suggests key recommendations for consideration in the context of standards-based reform, including: produce teachers who are multiculturally literate; re-assess ability grouping and tracking practices; reduce K-3 class size and elementary and secondary school size; expand and improve federal…

This 2006 Annual Joint Report of the State Board of Education and the Tennessee Higher Education Commission identifies four joint priorities and nine associated goals addressing areas of need in both student learning and educator development for the advancement of education in Tennessee. The joint priorities and initiatives focus on points of…

Measuring History complements the cases presented in Wise Social Studies Practices (Yeager & Davis, 2005). Yeager and Davis highlight the rich and ambitious teaching that can occur in the broad context of state-level testing. In this book, the chapter authors and I bring the particular state history tests more to the fore and examine how…

The New Standards Project (NSP) is an effort to create a state- and district-based assessment and professional development system to serve as a catalyst for major educational reform. As part of a professional development strategy tied to assessment, 114 teachers, curriculum supervisors, and assessment directors, representing 23 states and…

This annotated bibliography lists some of the resources and materials that the 12 national business organizations constituting the Business Coalition for Education Reform (BCER) have available to assist those interested in strengthening U.S. schools through the following activities: raising academic standards for all students; ensuring that…

Whether different amounts of general job stress and stress related to the Alabama Performance-Based Accreditation Standards were experienced by teachers and principals was studied in a sample of 65 principals and 242 teachers from 9 Alabama school systems. All subjects completed the Alabama Performance-Based Accreditation Standards Stress Measure,…

A study was undertaken for the Council on Postsecondary Accreditation to develop evaluative criteria and procedures for the accreditation of nontraditional education. The summary report presents the major activities and findings of the study. The Introduction gives its history and background and outlines its scope, including the goals,…

Significant 1970's federal legislation regarding American Indian education includes the Tribally Controlled Community Colleges Act; the Gifted and Talented Children's Act (Title IX Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or ESEA) which focuses in part on economically disadvantaged children; the Bilingual Education Act (Title VII ESEA); and the…

This publication is a compilation of the presentations given at a symposium held to explore where California is in respect to credit for prior and experiential learning, and whether the State should be moving toward a more comprehensive mechanism for assessing, awarding, and recording such credit. The keynote address provides an overview focusing…

A group of dedicated teachers in Gilmer County High School, Glenville, West Virginia (WV), worked with school administrators to make far-reaching changes to prepare all students for further study and the workplace. With their experiences from High Schools That Work workshops and help from a WV Department of Education representative, educators…

POLYTECH High School in Woodside, Delaware, has gone from being among the worst schools in the High Schools That Work (HSTW) network to among the best. Polytech, which is now a full-time technical high school, has improved its programs and outcomes by implementing a series of organizational, curriculum, teaching, guidance, and leadership changes,…

This report discusses outcomes of a study designed to update information on jurisdictional requirements for the conventional licensure of special educators and to extend inquiry into areas of special education licensure. Interviews were conducted and responses were received from 51 directors of licensure in state departments of education and the…

This document presents nine papers from a symposium on challenges currently facing U.S. high schools and their role in preparing students for high achievement in postsecondary education. The following papers are included: "What Ails High Schools? How Should They Be Reformed? Is There a Federal Role?" (Chester E. Finn); "Achievement:…