Education Encyclopedia

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Ethnicity Race and Culture - Latino Growth, Racial And Ethnic Minority Students In Higher Education - CULTURAL EXPECTATIONS AND STUDENT LEARNING

Students learn–whether in school or out. Of significance for the educational and scholarly communities is the extent to which certain kinds of learning are conducive to mainstream academic achievement within the context of formal educational institutions. The presumption is that a student's ability to acquire mainstream academic content and then demonstrate mastery of the content (of…

15 minute read

Readability in Dices - Readability Formulas, Readability and Comprehension Processes

For several decades researchers have been concerned with the question of determining how easy or difficult a text will be for a particular reader to comprehend. For example, if a teacher is assigning a textbook to an eighth-grade class, how would the teacher determine whether the class will actually comprehend the book? Writers may also want to consider the comprehensibility of their texts during …

5 minute read

Reading - Comprehension, Content Areas, Interest, Learning From Text, Prior Knowledge, Beliefs, And Learning - BEGINNING READING

Beginning reading encompasses acquisition of the multiple acts, skills, and knowledge that enable individuals to comprehend the meaning of text. Reading is a complex psycholinguistic activity and thus beginning reading is a lengthy and complex process whereby the learner acquires expertise in the various perceptual, sensory, linguistic, cognitive, metacognitive, and social skills that are involved…

10 minute read

Reading Disabilities - Historical Context, Types of Reading Disabilities, Validity of the Discrepancy Model, Changing Criteria for Reading Disability

The concept of reading disability, while widely accepted, is not clearly understood. Traditionally, reading disability has been defined as unexpected underachievement characterized as a discrepancy between achievement and intellectual aptitude, despite adequate opportunity to learn and in the absence of sensory difficulties or cultural deprivation. This discrepancy is typically defined operational…

17 minute read

Records and School Reports - Records Custodian, Categories

The information presented here is based on the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA or the Buckley Amendment) and the Illinois School Student Records Act. Public school records fall into two general categories. The first is the organizational records of the school district, which parallel those that any business or organization would ordinarily keep. Financial and personnel rec…

7 minute read

Recreation Programs in the Schools - School-Sponsored Recreation, Community-Sponsored Recreation, School-Community Cooperative Partnerships, Current Trends

As early as 1918 the relationship between the school and recreation was identified when the National Education Association (NEA) adopted the "Seven Cardinal Principles of Education," one of which was the "worthy use of leisure." Today, schools are involved in the provision of recreation using three approaches: school-sponsored activities, community-sponsored activities,…

5 minute read

Regional Laboratories and Research and Development Centers - The 1960s and 1970s, The (1980s) and Beyond

The U.S. government authorized formation of research and development (R&D) centers and regional educational laboratories (RELs) in 1965 under Title IV of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Labs were reauthorized in 1994 under Title IX of the Goals 2000: Educate America Act. During the Johnson administration's War on Poverty, the centers and laboratories were intended …

5 minute read

Research Grants and indirect Costs

During the later half of the twentieth century, the federal government of the United States invested heavily in research. Unlike other countries, such as Russia and Japan, which produce research within governmental laboratories, the research supported by the U.S. government primarily takes place within universities. To entice universities and their researchers to conduct the government's de…

5 minute read

Research Methods - Qualitative And Ethnographic, School And Program Evaluation, Verbal Protocols - OVERVIEW

How do people learn to be effective teachers? What percentage of American students has access to computers at home? What types of assessments best measure learning in science classes? Do college admission tests place certain groups at a disadvantage? Can students who are at risk for dropping out of high school be identified? What is the impact of new technologies on school performance? These are s…

18 minute read

Research Misconduct - Policies and Procedures, Definitions, Misconduct Cases, Responsible Conduct of Research, Future Considerations

Research encompasses a broad range of activities that are bound together by the common goal of advancing knowledge and understandings. Its usefulness to society rests on the expectation that researchers undertake and report their work fairly, accurately, and honestly. Researchers who fail to fulfill this expectation lack integrity and can be accused of engaging in research misconduct. In 1981 when…

15 minute read

Research Universities - Faculty and Students, Beyond Academics, The History of the Research University, Classifying and Ranking Research Universities

Research universities are postsecondary institutions that devote a large portion of their mission, resources, and focus to graduate education and research. Currently, there are more than 250 of these institutions in the United States. Research universities such as Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, and Michigan are often mentioned in the media due to their size, resources, status, and athletic teams. Th…

7 minute read

Residential Colleges - Defining Residential Colleges and Related Terms, The Classic Residential College, Benefits of Residential Colleges

Islamic in origin, the residential college may well be the oldest organizational model in Western higher education. Established as foundations to provide support for advanced students, residential colleges first appeared at the University of Paris and Oxford University in the twelfth century. From these medieval roots, the residential colleges of Oxford and Cambridge University evolved to become a…

12 minute read

Resource Allocation in Higher Education - Budgetary Concepts and Terms, Allocation Concepts and Terms, Achieving Normative Consensus, Conclusion

Institutions of higher education–be they large public universities or small private colleges–are not homogeneous organizations. Because of differing missions, goals, programs, histories, traditions, laws, and explicit procedures, they obtain and expend revenues, or financial resources, in myriad ways. Therefore, there is no universal model about the best way to allocate financial res…

14 minute read

John A. Rice (1888–1968) - Black Mountain College, Life as a Writer

Founder and first rector of Black Mountain College, a renowned experimental and progressive endeavor in higher education (1933–1956), John Andrew Rice Jr., was a major figure in debates during the 1930s and early 1940s among educators concerning the appropriate means and methods of a liberal education. Through magazine articles and his book I Came Out of the Eighteenth Century (1942), he be…

6 minute read

Joseph Mayer Rice (1857–1934)

Physician, journal editor, education critic, and originator of comparative methodology in educational research, Joseph Mayer Rice is recognized, along with Lester Frank Ward and John Dewey, as a major figure in the Progressive education movement in the United States. Rice was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Mayer and Fanny (Sohn) Rice, natives of Germany who immigrated to America in…

5 minute read

Risk Behaviors - Hiv/aids And Its Impact On Adolescents, Sexual Activity Among Teens And Teen Pregnancy Trends - DRUG USE AMONG TEENS

TABLE 1 Substance abuse is an international problem of epidemic proportions that has particularly devastating effects on youth because the early initiation of alcohol, tobacco, or other drug (ATOD) use within this population is linked to abuse and related problem behaviors among adults. The cost of alcohol abuse to society is estimated to be $250 billion per year in health care, public safety…

7 minute read

Risk Management in Higher Education - Tort Liability, Other Sources of Risk

During the late twentieth century, American society and higher education experienced a substantial increase in lawsuits resulting from some form of personal injury, according to John F. Adams and John W. Hall. A response to the trend of litigiousness, risk management seeks to control exposure to legal risk, thus limiting the negative impact of liability on the institution. In 1995 William A. Kapli…

6 minute read

Carl Rogers (1902–1987) - Counseling and Clinical Practice, The Move beyond Individual Counseling, An International Dialogue

American psychologist and therapist, Carl R. Rogers relied on personal experience as well as scientific inquiry to guide his methodology, much of which foreshadowed late-twentieth-century practice of psychotherapy. Rogers was born in Oak Park, Illinois, to a prosperous and quite religiously conservative Protestant upper-middle-class family. He was a precocious child, reading bible stories before h…

8 minute read

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) - Social Inequalities, Émile, Gender Considerations

A political and moral philosopher during the Enlightenment, Jean-Jacques Rousseau developed provocative ideas about human nature, education, and the desired relationship between individuals and the ideal society. Born in the city of Geneva, Switzerland, Jean-Jacques Rousseau lost his mother hours after his birth and was abandoned by his father at the age of seven. After many years of failed appren…

8 minute read

Harold Rugg (1886–1960)

Harold Rugg, a longtime professor of education at Teachers College, Columbia University, was one of the best-known educators during the era of Progressive education in the United States. He produced the first-ever series of school textbooks from 1929 until the early 1940s. Rugg was born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, the son of a carpenter. His early poverty seemed to preclude his attending college.…

4 minute read

Rural Education - OVERVIEW, INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT

Rural education reflects the circumstances, challenges, and context of places in America called "rural." Rural America has been and continues to be a vital part of the nation. As of 2001, rural America comprised 2,288 counties, contained 83 percent of the nation's land and was home to 21 percent of its population (51 million people). The United States, like the rest of the wor…

30 minute read

George I. Sanchez (1906–1972) - Career, Contribution

Reformer and activist, George I. Sanchez is recognized for his contributions to educational equity, especially for Mexican-American children. Sanchez was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and attended schools in Arizona and New Mexico before graduation from high school in Albuquerque. He taught for eight years in rural schools while working on his bachelor's degree and taking weekend and sum…

8 minute read

Scheduling - Historical Background of Scheduling, Selecting a Schedule, Scheduling Models, Staff Development

In 1994 the National Education Commission on Time and Learning found the issue of how time is spent in schools to be a matter of urgency. Likewise, the National Education Association reported that "across the nation in schools and districts engaged in transforming schools into more effective learning communities, the issue that has emerged as the most intense and the one that universally do…

10 minute read

School–Based Decisionmaking - Key Elements, Scope of Decision–Making, Decision-Making Structures

Since the release in 1983 of the National Commission on Excellence in Education report A Nation at Risk, there has been widespread call for education reform. The reform efforts of the 1980s and 1990s focused on organizational, curricular, and instructional changes necessary to improve the quality of education. Almost without exception, national reform reports advocated decentralization and enhance…

9 minute read

School Board Relations - Relation Of School Board To The Community, Relation Of School Board To The Superintendent - CONTROL OF THE SCHOOLS

American public education is uniquely structured: Unlike most other nations that tend to have highly centralized national systems of education, the locus of educational decision-making in the United States has traditionally been local. Some 14,000 local school districts in fifty diverse state systems have had delegated to them much of the operational responsibility for public education. Legally, e…

5 minute read

School Boards - RESPONSIBILITIES DUTIES DECISION-MAKING AND LEGAL BASIS FOR LOCAL SCHOOL BOARD POWERS

Local school boards have been an integral feature of the U.S. public education system for nearly 100 years, and they are widely regarded as the principal democratic body capable of representing citizens in local education decisions. The formal institutional roles assigned to school boards, and the designated position board members play as representatives of the community, would lead one to believe…

32 minute read

School Climate - Measuring School Climate, School Climate and Outcomes, Issues Trends and Controversies

Anyone who spends time in schools quickly discovers how one school can feel different from other schools. School climate is a general term that refers to the feel, atmosphere, tone, ideology, or milieu of a school. Just as individuals have personalities, so too do schools; a school climate may be thought of as the personality of a school. The concept of organizational climate has a rich history in…

7 minute read

School Facilities - OVERVIEW, MAINTENANCE AND MODERNIZATION OF

An effective school facility is responsive to the changing programs of educational delivery, and at a minimum should provide a physical environment that is comfortable, safe, secure, accessible, well illuminated, well ventilated, and aesthetically pleasing. The school facility consists of not only the physical structure and the variety of building systems, such as mechanical, plumbing, electrical …

22 minute read

School Food Programs - Early Lunch Programs, The National School Lunch Program, More Recent Program Changes, NSLP Payment Rates

Food service programs have long been recognized as important components of education in the American schools. "You can't teach a hungry child" has been an accepted principle since the early years of the country, when children were expected to bring lunches from home to get them through the day. However, not all children were able to do so because of financial and other circums…

18 minute read

School Libraries - History, Goals and Purposes, Materials and Equipment

The modern school library media center has a professionally trained school library media specialist who manages a central collection of diverse learning resources to support a school's curriculum, meet individual students' needs and interests, and ensure that young people develop information literacy skills within the school's curriculum. This concept of a learning resource ce…

11 minute read

School-Linked Services - TYPES OF SERVICES AND ORGANIZATIONAL FORMS, OUTCOMES

There has been a rapid expansion of coordinatedservices efforts throughout the United States since the late 1980s. Solid historical roots can be found in the Progressive era of the early twentieth century, as well as some of the Great Society interventions of the 1960s. However, the aggressive development of a system of coordinated services for children and families in need received its major impe…

21 minute read

School Readiness - Social and Emotional Development, Oral Language and Pre-Reading Skills

School readiness refers to the extent to which a child exhibits the behaviors, skills, and knowledge necessary to be successful in elementary school. These can be grouped into four categories: social and emotional development, oral language development and prereading skills, oral mathematics development and pre-mathematics skills, and general knowledge. Because individual schools vary in the timin…

11 minute read

School Reform - A Nation at Risk, Reform in Action, Greater Goals Better Teachers and More Accountability

Two decades of school reform came to a close at the end of the twentieth century. These efforts, led by E.D. Hirsch and Ted Sizer, began in the early 1980s and continued through the 1990s, leading to the development of programs such as Success for All. These programs were aimed at developing comprehensive school reform models. The New American Schools Development Corporation supported many of thes…

19 minute read

Joseph Schwab (1909–1988) - Education and Career, Scholarly Work, The Practical, Legacy

University of Chicago professor of education and natural sciences, Joseph Schwab was the originator of The Practical, a program for educational improvements based on curriculum deliberations. Joseph Jackson Schwab was born in Columbus, Mississippi, where he attended a private elementary school. After the sixth grade, Schwab entered the public schools, where he discovered science. As Schwab was vir…

6 minute read

Science Education - OVERVIEW, PREPARATION OF TEACHERS

Science has become an important component in the K–12 curriculum in American schools–but less so than reading and mathematics. At the end of the twentieth century reading and mathematics received more attention, government support, and focus for testing. It was assumed that reading and mathematics must be mastered first and that these skills were essential before the study of science…

24 minute read

Science Learning - Knowledge Organization And Understanding, Standards, Tools - EXPLANATION AND ARGUMENTATION

The K–12 U.S. science education standards, now published state by state, without exception cite competence in scientific investigation as an important curriculum goal from the early grades on. Students, it is claimed, should be able to formulate a question, design an investigation, analyze data, and draw conclusions. Reference to such skills in fact appears in discussions of curriculum obje…

10 minute read

Sea Grant Program - Operating Concepts, Magnitude and Scope

The sea is an integral part of American heritage. Historically, marine commerce, seafood products, and the productivity of coastal communities have been essential to the U.S. economy. However, the marine sciences did not enjoy a prominent role in the early development of the country's science enterprise. This began to change during the post-Sputnik years, spurred by U.S. President John F. K…

5 minute read

Secondary Education - Current Trends, International Issues - HISTORY OF

In the mid-to late nineteenth century, the United States became the first country to open secondary education to the general public. In the early twenty-first century, secondary education follows a common elementary school experience, typically beginning at age twelve and continuing through age seventeen or eighteen. Elementary education deals with the rudimentary skills of reading, writing, and c…

21 minute read

Legal Aspects Segregation - History, From Plessy to Brown, From Brown to Freeman, Segregation in Higher Education

Segregation in education is a systemic practice or policy of establishing and maintaining racially separate educational facilities, services, and activities. Historically, racial segregation in education includes assigning African-American and white students to separate school facilities because of race, and assigning only African-American teachers, staff, and administrators to schools established…

13 minute read

Service Learning - SCHOOL, HIGHER EDUCATION

While the origins of the service-learning movement can be found in volunteerism, community service, citizenship training, character education, youth service, and experiential learning, it is safe to say that the words service learning have come into common usage only since the 1980s in the United States, and even later internationally. The Commission on National and Community Service (1993) provid…

24 minute read

Severe and Education of individuals With Multiple Disabilities - Definition and Types of Severe and Multiple Disabilities

Individuals with severe disabilities and multiple disabilities are highly diverse in both their abilities and disabilities. What they share is a capacity to learn and a lifelong need for support. Persons with severe disabilities are: "individuals of all ages who require extensive ongoing support in more than one major life activity in order to participate in integrated community settings an…

11 minute read

Sexual Orientation - The Problem with Definition, Sexual Orientation Hesitantly Defined

Because adolescence is a time of transition from childhood into adulthood, adolescents are "journey people"–neither adults nor children, but traveling somewhere in between. Their identities on all levels are dynamic and convoluted. They are changing rapidly and often unevenly on physical, emotional, intellectual, moral, and spiritual levels. The sexual identity of an adolescen…

11 minute read

Sexuality Education - The Basics of Sexuality Education, Ongoing Challenges, Supporting Parents in Their Roles as Sexuality Educators

At the turn of the twenty-first century the rate of sexual intercourse among U.S. teenagers has declined; teen contraception rates, particularly condom use, have increased; and, as a result, teen birthrates declined during most of the 1990s. Support for sexuality education also seems to be at an all-time high. A poll jointly conducted in 1999 by the Sexuality Information and Education Council of t…

14 minute read

Albert Shanker (1928–1997)

President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the nation's second largest teachers' union, Albert Shanker was born in New York City in 1928 to Russian working-class immigrant parents. He grew up during the depression on the Lower East Side of New York, his father a newspaper deliveryman, his mother a sewing machine operator. Shanker was reared in a union home where, he said…

6 minute read

Edward Sheldon (1823–1897)

Edward Austin Sheldon was instrumental in bringing object training to the United States. As president of the Oswego Training School in Oswego, New York, from 1861 until his death, Sheldon worked to fulfill his commitment to make education accessible to all children, both in practice through free schools and in theory through a Pestalozzian teaching style. Born in Perry Center in Genesee County, Ne…

5 minute read

Single-Sex institutions - Historical Contribution, Characteristics of Contemporary Women's Colleges, Contemporary Importance of Women's Colleges

At the beginning of the twenty-first century there are only two men's colleges in the United States–Wabash College in Indiana and Deep Springs in California, although there are approximately eighty women's colleges. For all intents and purposes, men's colleges seem to have outlived their function, although women's colleges continue to offer women students a worth…

11 minute read

B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) - Behavioral Analysis, Social Service, Educational Reform

Burrhus Frederick Skinner pioneered the science of behavioral analysis and positive reinforcement as an educational tool. Skinner grew up in Susquehanna, Pennsylvania, a small railroad town thirty miles from the New York state line. His father was an ambitious lawyer for the Erie railroad; his mother, a civic-minded woman that continually reminded Frederick to be aware of "what other people…

9 minute read

Sleep and Children's Physical Health - Biological Factors That Affect Sleep, Societal Factors, Effects of Insufficient Sleep

Sleep is not a passive extravagance that people allow themselves to indulge in. On the contrary, sleep is a highly regulated, active state of being that engages many aspects of one's physiology in a complex manner. It is essential to life. While the purpose of sleep remains a complicated mystery, depriving one's self of sleep has serious consequences for one's health and wakin…

9 minute read

Small Nations - Definitions, Problems Faced by Small Nations, Benefits Gained by Small Nations, The Range of Provision

In purely numerical terms, the world is a world of small nations. More than half the globe's sovereign states have populations of less than 5 million, and about fifty have populations below 1.5 million. Some of these states are islands, some are archipelagos, and some are enclaves. The states are scattered in all parts of the world, but with concentrations in the Caribbean and South Pacific…

8 minute read

David Eugene Smith (1860–1944)

Professor of mathematics at Teachers College, Columbia University, David Eugene Smith is considered one of the founders of the field of mathematics education. Smith was born in Cortland, New York, to Abram P. Smith, attorney and surrogate judge, and Mary Elizabeth Bronson, who taught her young son Latin and Greek. Smith studied at Syracuse University, earning a B.Ph. (1881), M.Ph. (1884), and Ph.D…

6 minute read

Education Programs Smithsonian institution - Elementary and Secondary Education Programs, Higher Education Programs, Professional Development, Family and Continuing Education Programs

The Smithsonian Institution, an independent trust instrumentality of the United States, is a center for research dedicated to public education, national service, and scholarship in the arts, science, and history. Its collections hold more than 140 million artifacts and specimens. The Smithsonian was established in 1846 with funds bequeathed to the United States by James Smithson, a British scienti…

7 minute read

David Snedden (1868–1951)

One of the most prominent educators of the Progressive era, David Samuel Snedden was probably the most articulate advocate of social efficiency–a term popularized by Benjamin Kidd in Social Evolution (1894) and taken up by Snedden for his approach to design an educational program that reconciled the demands of industrial society with the capabilities and interests of children. Born on a far…

5 minute read

Social Capital and Education

Social capital refers to the intangible resources embedded within interpersonal relationships or social institutions. Social capital can exist in three major forms: as obligations and expectations, as information channels, and as social norms. Obligations and expectations can be conceived of as a "credit slip" that people hold, and that can be cashed when necessary. Information chann…

3 minute read

Social Cohesion and Education - Background: Social Cohesion and Development, Social Functions of Education

Social cohesion is said to be high when nearly all members of a society voluntarily "play by the rules of the game," and when tolerance for differences is demonstrated in the day-to-day interactions across social groups within that society. But how does social cohesion occur? One principal lesson of history is so obvious that it is sometimes ignored. Economic development is made poss…

22 minute read

Social Fraternities and Sororities - History, Characteristics of Fraternities and Sororities, Reforms and Renewal

The American college Greek-letter societies, consisting of fraternities and sororities, remain a popular form of association for students on college campuses in the early twenty-first century. Known as the oldest form of student self-governance in the American system of higher education and called perhaps the clearest example of a student subculture, fraternities and sororities have been a force o…

10 minute read

Social Organization of Schools - American Public Schools in Context, The Purposes of Schooling, Defining Organizations and Bureaucracies

Understanding contemporary schools requires examining their purposes, evolution, structure, and political dynamics. Ordinary ideas of how schools operate are clouded by a number of misconceptions and assumptions. People often think that schools only teach skills and content, such as reading, writing, and math; or history, English, and social studies. They also think about extracurricular activitie…

27 minute read

Social Promotion - In Comparison to Grade Retention, Advantages and Disadvantages, Different Perspectives

Social promotion is the most common name for the policy of promoting students to the next grade level despite poor achievement at their current grade level. It is motivated by a desire to protect the social adjustment and school motivation of struggling students, as well as a belief that these students will get more from exposure to new content at the next grade than they would from repeating thei…

10 minute read

Social Studies Education - OVERVIEW, PREPARATION OF TEACHERS

The contemporary social studies curriculum has its roots in the Progressive education movement of the early twentieth century. With its emphasis on the nature of the individual learner and on the process of learning itself, the movement challenged the assumptions of subject-centered curricula. Until this time, the social studies curriculum was composed of discrete subject areas, with a primary emp…

24 minute read

South Asia - Education Development after Independence, Recent Policies and Approaches, Conclusion

Writing about education in South Asian region means writing about one-fourth of the world's population. South Asia comprises seven contiguous countries: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The region is geographically knit together and is homogenous in terms of sociocultural, political, historical, economic, and educational factors. The people of this area a…

15 minute read

Speech and Education of individuals with Language Impairment

Communication skills are the foundation of academic and social performance. The ability to participate in active and interactive communication with peers and adults in the educational setting is essential for student success in school. Problems with speech or language development can lead to difficulties learning to listen, speak, read, or write. As a result, children with communication disorders …

7 minute read

Speech and Theater Education - Functions, Incidence of Speech Instruction, Nature of Instruction, Cocurricular Speech Programs, Teacher Preparation

Speech communication education in the secondary schools is of critical importance in preparing students for their roles in a global society. Since the early 1970s, employers and college admissions personnel have identified speaking, listening, and critical thinking as skills and knowledge crucial to success. These three skills are the basis for most oral communication or speech classes in the scho…

13 minute read

Teaching of Spelling - The Nature of the Spelling System, A Brief History of Spelling Instruction in the United States

Spelling has traditionally been considered to be a component of the English/language arts curriculum. Among most educators and the public, spelling retains its traditional definition: "the knowledge and application of the conventional written representation of words in the process of writing, and the instruction necessary to develop this knowledge." During the last few years of the t…

11 minute read

School Sports - OVERVIEW, ROLE IN STUDENT'S SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

School sports refer to athletic programs in the context of the school setting. They refer most often to interschool competition at the middle/junior high school and high school levels in the United States. Interschool programs at the elementary level vary among communities. School sports also include intramural competition, but such programs are very rare. In the mid-1990s, intramural sports invol…

25 minute read

Standards Movement in American Education - Governors Take the Initiative, Standards-Driven Reform Models, The Rise of the Standards Movement

The origins of the standards movement in American education are largely economic. For much of the twentieth century, most jobs in the United States could be done by people with an eighth-grade level of literacy. Only a minority of people needed more than that, and fewer still needed the kinds of knowledge and skill associated with the work of professionals and managers. Then, in the late 1970s and…

16 minute read

Standards for Student Learning - Definitions and Descriptions, Historical Context, Comparing Past and Present, Potential for Success

Standards, as they are used in education, are verbal statements of goals or desired classes of outcomes. They describe what the goals of the system are. Standards-based educational reform has the intention of having most or all students reach identified standards and of organizing educational services, including teacher preparation and instructional interventions, to address such standards. The rh…

11 minute read

State Departments of Education - ROLE AND FUNCTION, VOCATIONAL EDUCATION

In the United States, education has been established as a state function. Each state exercises this function completely or in part through a state department of education, within which there are varying degrees of responsibility. The state educational authority (usually known as the state department of education and personified by the state board of education and the chief state school officer and…

27 minute read

State Educational Systems - The Legal Basis for State Control of Education, School Organization Models, The School District Consolidation Movement

The American system of public schooling is unusual for a modern state, as most nations rely upon education systems operated by the national government. The education system in the United States is actually a set of state-based systems. There is, however, a federal government role in education, and national education organizations and activities exist. But the ultimate authority–what is call…

9 minute read