Urban writing programs help frustrated city youth to gain interest and find power through writing. Education leaders and urban writing programs along with classroom teachers will have to work collaboratively in order to motivate and empower students through the written words.

Effective writing teachers act as models, coaches, assessors, planners and consultants when they establish common objectives and activities, build social bonds, and support students as they grow in their abilities. Managing five roles is very challenging for the writing teachers, but with patience and perseverance, they can help students to become…

Standardized writing tests helps educators to learn how well their students' will be scored and how well they can apply assessment techniques in their own classrooms. Students can use assessment as an instruction tool in order to generate a scoring rubric of their own, which fosters critical thinking and formative self-assessment abilities that…

New writing components in standardized tests can have negative impact on classroom writing skills. Some of the steps that an educator should take in order to improve writing instruction when a standardized test fails to address the needs of the students and schools are described.

An education that is centered on complex thinking and communicating helps graduates to gain good jobs in the U.S. Educators will have to focus on raising students' achievement in math, science, and reading because complex, technical skills are essential for the new century's jobs.

The structure of No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), whether the NCLB tests are appropriate or not and the adequate yearly progress (AYP) of public school students are discussed. Accountability systems implemented with inappropriate achievement tests are harming students more than helping them.

Some of the recent studies show that the public's skepticism is increasing regarding the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The percentage of voters and parents who opposed NCLB has grown substantially, as school improvement and accountability is one thing, but high stake testing and withholding federal funds from schools that are under performing…

The jobs such as teachers, administrators, curriculum supervisors and developers, and university faculty members require them to use their time efficiently and effectively. Deciding on how to use the time and how to prioritize will help in achieving both.

The effectiveness of writing instruction and process writing are discussed. The process writing approach has a significant impact on the U.S. education and hence, the principles of process writing provide guidance to teachers on potentially effective instructional practices.

A weakness in accessing the sounds of spoken language represents the most robust and specific correlate of reading disability in young school age children and adolescents. Neurological science and reading research that provides the scientific knowledge regarding this disability is presented.

Educators must understand and act on scientific evidence so that the reader learns to access print accurately and fluently. The process of conducting scientific research is presented so that scientific evidence can be clearly understood by the educators to select the most effective and instructional approaches.

The false claims about reading and reading instruction made by the 2000 National Reading Panel (NRP) are presented. Sufficient evidences to challenge all the claims made by NRP are also highlighted.

The effective classroom reading instruction and early reading interventions is routinely misrepresented and exaggerated by the federal officials. Individual tutoring that produces on-level reading achievement is presented based on the misinterpretations of the research.

The National Reading Panel's report on reading instruction placed too much emphasis on systematic phonics. The effectiveness of systematic phonics is presented with a comprehensive framework so that there is a clear implication for institutional practice.

Anchoring new words in multiple contexts, teachers can make vocabulary meaningful and memorable. The forms of vocabulary instruction is presented so that the misidentification between words and their meanings can be avoided.