When the author had been teaching middle school and high school math for six years, she had just completed her master's degree and was itching to find other opportunities for professional growth. That's when she came across a flyer about certification by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (www.nbpts.org). National Board…

In this article, the author talks about the Common Core State Standards and what they mean to teachers and their students. The Common Core State Standards Initiative provides an opportunity for classroom practitioners across the nation to hone their skills, focus on student learning, and ensure that all the students they serve will be working…

Learners who have struggled along the way can provide many lessons for everyone and for schools that are supposed to help all students learn. Based on interviews with hundreds of "great learners," the author identifies seven characteristics that describe what sets great learners apart from other learners. These are: (1) Great learners see learning…

Plenty of reports and research have documented the achievement gap between black males and other students. But few have acknowledged that current structures and practices have contributed to that gap. To address the low achievement of black males, schools must be willing to accept that there are ways of looking at the world, modes of…

English teachers have always had a hard time getting kids to read books, but in recent years the problem has spread and taken new directions. The rejection of books by teens and young adults has become a common feature. One by one, recent studies and surveys have charted the decline. With the advent of the Digital Age, teens have more diversions…

Many minority groups in the United States tend to struggle in school. One reason minority students are likely to encounter more problems in schools than mainstream students involves incomplete knowledge of minority students' learning and communication styles. Authors such as Banks (2006) and Pewewardy (2008) emphasize that minority students differ…

Losing one's mother naturally makes a person reflect on the really important things. The author was reminded that when faced with the Great Question, which even the best schools cannot handle competently, all other questions can seem trivial, and it's tempting to back away from them. But the "lesser" questions schools mishandle can have a terrible…

Policymakers target educational accountability primarily at public school administrators and teachers, rather than also include the broader society in which schools are housed and where poverty thrives. This article proposes a process through which community members can develop a report card to determine the educational capacity of a region and…

Traditional ways of teaching--working from a textbook, designing quizzes, and assigning seat work--are predicated on the idea of students' ability and desire to self-regulate. However, these sedentary techniques are ineffective with unmotivated students and poor readers. Teachers commonly invoke fear of failure in an attempt to engage students in…

This article, written as a memo to the author's friend in response to an earlier conversation, compares the American education system with that of Japan. First, the author examines cultural differences between Japan and America as a lens through which to look at these two countries. Then, Japanese and American schooling are compared in terms of…

This article examines the contribution of the No Child Left Behind Act. The authors believe that the "other means" that can substantially advance equal educational opportunity are to provide "meaningful educational opportunities" for all children in each of the schools that they attend. In this article, the authors discuss meaningful educational…

In the current era of standards-based education, student self-assessment stands alone in its promise of improved student motivation and engagement, and learning. Correctly implemented, student self-assessment can promote intrinsic motivation, internally controlled effort, a mastery goal orientation, and more meaningful learning. Its powerful…

Tests of academic progress such as those enforced by No Child Left Behind Act are the only practical way to hold schools accountable for educating all children and are therefore essential to the twin aims of quality and fairness. Many of the complaints against the No Child Left Behind law pertain to the supposedly harmful influence of intensive…

In this article, the author answers the question: "Why do Americans love to reform the public schools?" His answer has three parts. First, there is an old and persistent cultural strain in American history, derived from many sources, that seeks human perfection and sees education and schooling as essential to that perfectibility. That goal is high…

In this essay, the authors discuss what it might take to develop knowledge that can help education policymakers and schools attain their goals. In reading both the research and the current policy environment, the authors identify several fundamental reasons why it is so difficult to develop the knowledge needed to inform policies that might enable…