The very essence of a culture is revealed in its educational attitudes, policies, and practices. Just as blood pressure and body temperature are measures of physical health, such matters are measures of social justice. This article focuses on the attitudes of males toward the education of women by highlighting the attitudes of the most famous and…

Historians often identify Horace Mann and other middle-class reformers of the mid-nineteenth century as the catalysts of the Common School Movement, the forerunner of today's public school systems. Despite education historians' focus on Mann and his ilk as the original advocates of common schooling, the notion of free universal public education…

In this article, the author talks about the school's moral responsibility and illustrates the extent that a K-12 school and its staff are responsible for its students' economic success. All school reform is based on a relatively simple model: an intervenor (the reform agent) produces change(s) in certain school variables to cause a change in…

President Obama's education agenda, which unhappily seems to be George W. Bush's program squared, contains two major features that will impact teacher pay and working conditions. The first is that charter schools are to be promoted aggressively. The second is an insistence on teacher merit pay. In this article, the author talks about teacher merit…

Despite many renewed possibilities for U.S. schools, fixing them remains a multifaceted problem. Clearly focusing on improving education for all American children requires a comprehensive understanding of global issues that will impact their future, along with cutting-edge interdisciplinary research from neuroscience, psychology, pediatrics, and…

Brain-Based Learning (BBL) can be viewed as techniques gleaned from research in neurology and cognitive science used to enhance teacher instruction. These strategies can also be used to enhance students' ability to learn using ways in which they feel most comfortable, neurologically speaking. Jensen (1995/2000) defines BBL as "learning in…

University schools of education are challenged to prepare future teachers using best practices. Knowledge of brain research helps provide one piece of a multidisciplinary conceptual framework for educators as they articulate and enhance effective teaching. This qualitative study discovered recommendations for the best brain-compatible…

Early education teachers are familiar with using music and rhythm as tools for learning language and building memory. However, the potential of music to help across all special education settings is largely unexplored. Work with music has been widely judged helpful in cases of psychological trauma, yet people do not know why it is helpful. The…

The U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has measured various types of high school graduation, completion, and dropout rates for decades. In 2006, NCES was directed by senior managers in the Education Department to reduce use of its standard graduation and completion rate measures and instead promote the…

One of the main professional-development challenges social studies teachers face involves adjusting content and instruction to accommodate the surging population of English Language Learners (ELLs). Between the 1993-1994 and 2004-2005 school years, ELL school populations increased 68 percent to more than 5.1 million, compared to a 7.8 percent…

This article reports the results of a study evaluating the impact of entry-level teacher education course work on teacher candidates' multicultural attitudes. The authors were interested in finding out which curriculum was the most effective at helping teacher candidates examine their multicultural attitudes and at the same time enhancing their…

The goal of this article is raising awareness of several issues recently brought to the authors' attention. Among them are concerns that rubrics are a pervasive assessment tool in current educational settings. The authors posit how the pervasive use of rubrics broaches concerns about teachers' grading practices with rubrics and students'…

Achievement gaps concern educators at all levels today. Educators recognize the threats these gaps pose to education quality and equity, and they are working hard to close them--but an equally threatening gap in education with consequences just as serious is largely ignored. It influences every educational-improvement effort and seriously…

Over the past decade, the Gurian Institute has trained more than forty thousand teachers in more than two thousand schools and districts, both coed and single-sex. The institute's trainers have worked with public and private schools, Montessori schools, and a variety of charter and independent schools in fifteen countries; it has therefore been…

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…