The National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) recently published the results of the 2008 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in Music, the fourth in a series of NAEP music assessments that began in 1971. It is important that NAEP, known as "The Nation's Report Card," measures the music achievement of America's students, both…

The Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) is committed to providing the highest quality of education to its students. One way to provide a quality education is with an effective curriculum that reflects high standards and expectations. Thus, DoDEA has developed rigorous content standards aligned with national guidelines and standards.…

The possibilities of the school are not unlimited. For this reason, in order to answer the question of what the existing resources ought to be used for there is always the problem of the choice of goals of the school's educational activity. Different schools have different possibilities when it comes to achieving the desired results of educational…

Educational reform represents a long-term focus of Australian governments. National policy documents have emphasised quality education for all and improved teacher quality for over 30 years. The gaps in achievement among various groups of learners represent a problem for an education system seeking to achieve national quality benchmarks,…

This study examined the factors associated with childcare staff members' readiness to implement quality standards in early childhood settings in Ireland. To coincide with a new government policy that provides every three-year-old child with access to a free preschool year, a framework designed to improve the quality of early childhood care and…

In his 2005 State of the City address, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino directed the Boston Public Schools (BPS) to "provide all 4-year-olds in the city with full-day school within five years." There were several reasons for this commitment, including an emerging consensus that early childhood education makes a positive difference in long-term…

In recent years, Bahrain has taken serious actions to diversify its sources of income and solve major national problems such as unemployment. Through this process it discovered that one of the main factors for its economic problems was the quality of higher education on offer. This led to the creation of a national Quality Assurance Authority that…

Globalization and increased diversity within student populations results in a growing impetus toward a multicultural approach to music education. The National Standards in Music Education (MENC, 2010) requires that students experience the music of other cultures; however, not all multicultural music programs are equivalent in content, depth of…

This issue brief was written to assist state policymakers in better understanding how social and emotional learning (SEL) can help students to be college and career ready. The brief provides a short description of what SEL is, why it is needed, and what it looks like in practice. In addition, examples of standards that support SEL at the federal…

This article reports on the findings of a research project which aimed at determining what the key implications of the Higher Education Qualifications Framework would be for the curricula of Universities of Technology. The key problems which were investigated were the seeming lack of understanding of the exact implications of the Higher Education…

Both the public and private higher education sectors in Oman are undergoing rapid change in the number and type of local and foreign degrees offered. The Sultanate is developing a comprehensive quality assurance system to ensure the educational appropriateness of all degrees awarded in Oman. This paper examines the collaboration between the…

Today's educational environment requires teachers who understand teaching and learning, have strong content knowledge, and can make connections between life experiences and the curriculum. Teachers are expected to be continually learning to improve their practice. Professional learning is essential in this process. Research on professional…

This paper argues that the current approach to educational quality formation in transnational higher education promotes educational imperialism, and that guidelines and practices should be altered to embrace context-sensitive measures of quality. The claims are sustained by findings from a study that investigated how academics understood and…

In this report, the National Council on Teacher Quality evaluates key features of 67 undergraduate institutions elementary, secondary and special education teacher preparation in the state of Texas. The authors apply 25 standards that bear directly on the capacity of those programs to attract talented individuals and prepare them to teach…

The Scottish Chartered Teacher Scheme was designed to recognise and reward teachers who attained high standards of practice. The scheme emerged in 2001 as part of an agreement between government, local employing authorities and teacher organisations. Policies such as the chartered teacher scheme aim to benefit students in two main ways: by…