In an insightful commentary, the author ruminates on the dilemmas of coaching in the context of high-stakes testing. [Drawn from an essay titled "Send Me in, Coach!" that the author has written for a future issue of "The New Teacher," a journal published by the City University of New York.]

In considering the challenges of basic skills education, Shulman returns to the advice of one of his mentors, Benjamin Bloom. The reason students fail, according to Bloom, is that they need more time to succeed, and time is what educators fail to give them. According to Bloom, nearly anybody can learn nearly anything given enough time. The…

The authors point out that offices of institutional research are valuable resources for collecting data to help faculty improve their teaching, and can involve the whole institution in a collaborative effort towards improved student learning. Defining institutional research as a capacity to work closely with faculty to explore questions about what…

The writer describes a site visit to the teaching hospital of a major American medical school, part of the Carnegie Foundation's ten-year program of research on how lawyers, engineers, clergy, school teachers, nurses, and physicians are taught and how they learn. Of particular note to Schulman was an exercise known as "M&M" (Morbidity and…

The author offers thoughts on emerging pictures and consequences if the teacher is considered the primary agent of his or her own accountability. Noting the current wave of calls for educational accountability, Shulman suggests that typical mechanisms for ensuring quality often miss much of what actually goes on in classrooms, and that looking…