This paper explores the ways results of National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data might be communicated to a variety of audiences, each with differing needs for information, interest in its findings, and sophistication in interpreting the results. The paper describes market-basket reporting as a feasible alternative to traditional…

The Assignment: Media Literacy curriculum is a 6-module media literacy curriculum developed by Renee Hobbs of Babson College and her staff in collaboration with the Discovery Channel. There are three versions of Assignment: Media Literacy, one for elementary school students, one for middle school students, and one for high school students. Close…

Individual states have a long tradition of providing financial support for their public K-12 schools. This support reflects the state's constitutional requirement to educate its citizens. However, states vary widely in both the amount of funding provided to public schools, and the distribution of funding among schools. The fundamental observation…

Teachers are responsible for delivering, selecting, and implementing learning activities for their classrooms. They must consider the best approaches to engage their students as well as to meet the school's standards in instruction. Here is a practical how-to book to supplement the social studies curriculum. It places at the teacher's disposal,…

This short report on revenues and expenditures at the school district level is a companion to the state-level E.D. TAB, Revenues and Expenditures for Public Elementary and Secondary Education: School Year 2002-03 (NCES 2005-353R), which presents total state and national spending on public elementary and secondary education. This report provides…

The current paper summarizes the problem of K-12 students' comprehension of text. In an effort to improve reader understanding the publishing industry has adopted numerous research-based recommendations to facilitate learning by including visual elements that supplement text: graphic organizers; pictures; graphics; and digital audio and video…

Cognitive neuroscience will provide theoretical foundations for areas of educational policy and practice. Educators will benefit from knowledge in the basic sciences related to brain development and function. Brain development begins at birth and the brain remains capable of complex changes throughout the lifespan. Educators will want to be aware…

Teacher members of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) describe the study of current events as essential or very important to the social studies curriculum. Most teachers indicated using current events to provide contemporary examples of abstract historical, social, economic, and political concepts or to illustrate the continuity of…

This paper discusses what is wrong with the conventional model of teacher education that is stimulating calls for reform and questions whether there is a better way. The paper is organized into three sections. The first examines the relationship between conceptions of teaching and views about learning to teach. The second section identifies the…

This study assessed how New Jersey's state accountability system encouraged or thwarted charter school success, how effectively performance standards were defined and enacted by authorizing agents, and how individual charter schools were developing accountability processes that made them more or less successful than their charter school…

This paper presents aspects of a study that aims to describe and make sense of changes over time in the intellectual field of mathematics education research. Drawing on the work of B. Bernstein, especially his essay on intellectual fields and knowledge structures, the paper seeks to raise questions about the fields standing in the wider field of…

In 2002, five state agencies overseeing technology centers and technical colleges formed a consortium with the Council on Occupational Education, a national accreditor of workforce education institutions. The purpose was to develop common benchmarks and a common report card. Subsequently, the consortium received a 3-year grant in 2001 from the…

In educational settings, decentralized budgeting refers to various fiscal practices that disperse budgeting responsibility away from central administration to the line education units. This distributed decision-making is common to several financial management models. Among the many financial management models that employ decentralized budgeting…

The object of study in geography is the earth, and more precisely, the earth as the home of man. Literacy, as applied to geography, involves a fresh new layer on the educational itinerary. It presumes that a person already has the ability to read and write and to communicate verbally. This dictionary of geographic literacy enhances this learning…

This booklet presents some activities to measure various weather phenomena. Directions for constructing a weather station are included. Instruments including rain gauges, thermometers, wind vanes, wind speed devices, humidity devices, barometers, atmospheric observations, a dustfall jar, sticky-tape can, detection of gases in the air, and pH of…