It is common knowledge that teacher quality is a key in-school factor affecting student achievement. While the quality of teaching clearly matters for how much students learn, this quality is challenging to measure. Evaluating teacher quality based on the level of their students' end-of-year test scores has been one method of assessing…

The author explores how students can become partners in innovation and inquiry, more engaged in the classroom, and better positioned to succeed when educators listen to their students talk about learning. Bueschel concludes that students who have not been successful in school present many challenges, but they can also be an asset in overcoming…

This report details five principles for creating powerful classrooms and offers a new vision for professional development: (1) High Structure; (2) High Challenge; (3) Intensity; (4) Intentionality and Learning How to Learn; and (5) Inquiry and Making Learning Visible. Included are recommendations drawn from the work of the 11 community college…

This document is intended for leaders and decision makers who work with community colleges at the classroom, college, and system level. Readers will find an overview of the purpose, activities, findings, and recommendations from a three-year project involving 11 California community colleges, undertaken as a partnership between The Carnegie…

Noting that it is easy, especially for those inside higher education, to take it for granted, the writer notes that none of his grandparents had the opportunity to go to college, let alone graduate. Among parents, aunts and uncles, a single bachelor's degree was earned. It was the next two generations, benefited by the GI Bill, the subsequent…

This paper, highlights the forthcoming book "Educating for Democracy." The book articulates the conditions under which political teaching and learning in college is and is not legitimate, making the case that education for political development can and should be conducted in a manner that is consistent with the core values of higher education…

In early January 2004, in connection with its centennial, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching began a 30-month appraisal of relations between influential philanthropic foundations and educational institutions (both K-12 and higher education) with the goal of strengthening those relations. The authors, both co-directors of the…

The authors share principles developed from a Sloan Foundation-sponsored conference where participants considered professional development broadly, from learning from the scholarship of their colleagues to seeking support to attain personal equilibrium.

The Carnegie Foundation has developed a new set of lenses for viewing American higher education that broadens description of U.S. colleges and universities. By expanding the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education from a single typology to a set of distinct classifications representing several ways to think about how colleges…

Like summer football rankings, the college rankings tell something about the potential impact that a college or university may have on a student, based on the resources of campuses on the one hand and their reputations on the other. When a student and that student's parents are looking for "the right campus," resources should be important. What…