How can we enhance activation? Studying should be a challenging, yet rewarding activity for students who intend to graduate. The Flow theory (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, 1997) predicts that differential levels of perceived challenge and skill (flow) are related to optimized mental states and increased activation. However, the influence of concurrent…

The National Standards movement seeks to raise the quality of the American educational system. According to one of its chief architects, Diane Ravitch (2000), national standards give clear expectations for students, teachers, parents, colleges, and employers that will result in improved student achievement. Forty-nine of the fifty states (save…

Knoxville College, Morris Brown College and Barber Scotia College. These institutions are just some of the recent victims of lost accreditation--and there are others. Many historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have either teetered on the brink, suffered or closed entirely following the loss of accreditation from the Southern…

Grade inflation is a longstanding problem whose seriousness is demonstrated by a wide variety of studies of grade distributions. A few institutions have changed the information on their transcripts in an effort to account for it. Proposals to index grades have been largely unsuccessful for a variety of reasons. A simple index, the Real GPA, is…

A paradox seems to exist in educational policy and practice in England and Wales. On the one hand, numerous references to promote community are made in the aims and objectives of the National Curriculum, and throughout the curricula. On the other, trends to increase accountability and standardization through competition seem antithetical to ideals…

Ten years have passed since the publication of national standards documents in social studies subjects. Many disciplines are considering revising or updating their standards work. In the meantime, states and local school districts are preparing to revise their social studies curriculum frameworks to articulate for the provisions of No Child Left…

This paper looks back on 10 years of accreditation in Hungary, in which the Hungarian Accreditation Committee completed the accreditation of all the country's higher education institutions and their programmes. Drawing from the lessons learned, and also based on the recommendations of the external panel that reviewed its work, the Hungarian…

The Higher Education Quality Committee of the Council on Higher Education in South Africa recently carried out an evaluation of all MBA programmes offered in the country by South African as well as foreign higher education institutions. The MBA review is located within the context of the implementation of a comprehensive external quality assurance…

A non-cushioned adequate yearly progress (AYP) sledgehammer will start pounding many schools from the beginning of 2005. The AYP-failed schools that receive Title 1 No Child Behind Policy (NCLB) funds will be placed on a sanction-laden improvement track than can improve a school all the way into nonexistence.

An urban community has forced the issue to get the school that it wants and that its children rightly deserve. The indispensable feature of successful schools in a functioning democracy include creating an authentic community capable of identifying obstacles and opportunities, setting standards and expectations, and deciding how best to provide…

This paper explores the contribution of work-based supervision to an education programme in mental health from the perspectives of supervisors and supervisees. It attempts to clarify the supervisory role by looking at the literature together with supervisors' reported learning and development needs. Supervisors responded positively to a…

"Developing Acceptable Evidence in Educational Technology Research" (Schrum et al., 2005) and its precursor editorial, "A Proactive Approach to a Research Agenda for Educational Technology" (Bull, Knezek, Roblyer, Schrum, & Thompson, 2005), are unprecedented collaborative efforts by journal editors to influence research in…

This brief report summarizes how American education has drifted into the accountability systems now in use, either under individual state laws or as mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. The report describes how slip-sliding into the current accountability requirements has resulted in a system so flawed that it fails in its…

The primary purpose of the "2007 Mississippi Mathematics Framework" is to provide a basis for curriculum development for K-12 teachers. The framework provides an outline of what students should learn through competencies and objectives/benchmarks. Suggested teaching strategies and assessments for those strategies are correlated to the…

On September 8, 2005, 43 Tennessee state educational and policy leaders participated in the Tennessee Education Forum in Nashville, Tennessee, to discuss ways to improve students' transitions from high school to postsecondary education and careers. The forum was sponsored by the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) and the League for…