The paper highlights the development of a collaborative formative assessment scoring process in a partnership between an urban university and one of the nation's largest districts. We explore collaborative research through the lens of a single formative assessment rubric derived from the Claims, Evidence, and Reasoning Framework (CER, McNeill…

As opportunities for face-to-face teaching, in-person conference attendance, travel, professional exchanges, digital collaboration, and formal institutional and organizational partnerships have gained traction, English language teaching (ELT) professionals have the chance, once again, to engage in numerous types of collaboration. In this article,…

Research Experience for Teachers (RET) programs have been placing K-12 teachers in university research labs for almost three decades (Pop et al., 2010). However, the long-term impacts are rarely explored. This paper summarizes data from a survey study of 135/158 teachers (88% response rate) who participated in Stanford University's RET programs…

This research study examines the impact of teacher research on participants in a large-scale educational reform initiative in the United States, No Child Left Behind, and its strand for reading teachers, Reading First. Reading First supported professional development for teachers in order to increase student scores on standardized tests. The…

This article reports the research findings of a qualitative study thatemploys case study research methods to examine a newly-formed university-district-teacher union partnership. Examination of the question ''How do we better prepare teachers'' led to the formation of a university-district-association (teacher union) partnership, which led to a…

People often respond to the pressure of attending a high school reunion or their child's wedding by going on a crash diet to get quick results. In response, friends may marvel about how good they look on the outside. But what folks don't acknowledge is that, in the name of getting results, crash dieters have done some very unhealthy things to…

Few in the education field discount the eminently logical idea that teachers should be supported in the continuous improvement of their craft. But as a term for describing ongoing training investments in the teaching force, "professional development" has become both ubiquitous and all but meaningless. Though frequently invoked by…

This research is a follow up to a similar study published by the Center for Rural Pennsylvania in 2003 in which researchers examined alternative education policies and practices among Pennsylvania school districts. The current study extended the previous research to include information on the perceptions of administrators and teachers on the…

President Bush says that the No Child Left Behind Act is working, pointing to student-achievement results from a single subsection of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and tentative Reading First data. But the evidence available to support his claim is questionable. The data Mr. Bush cited are from just the "long-term…

In 2002, the RAND Corporation launched a project to understand how educators are responding to the new accountability requirements in California, Georgia, and Pennsylvania--three states that represent a range of approaches, regions, and student populations. The researchers aimed to identify the factors that enhance the implementation of SBA…

The history of university faculty in Spain and the changes brought about by the University Reform Act of 1983 are discussed, including the faculty status as civil servants, faculty hiring, provisions for research opportunities, age distribution, women faculty, and faculty development opportunities. (MSE)