A high-school English teacher educated his students (military dependents) about the Vietnam War by helping them discover their own parents' role and the war's effects on their lives. After compiling research and interview data, students presented scenes depicting what people brought to the Vietnam War Memorial. (MLH)

Teachers' work with four National Science Foundation-funded curricula in the Missouri Middle-School Mathematics Project has disclosed 10 critical implementation elements: administrative support, opportunities for study, curriculum sampling, daily planning, interaction with experts, collaboration with colleagues, incorporation of new assessments,…

Observation of 200 children ages 4 to 19 attending a Massachusetts nongraded alternative school disclosed substantial age mixing. Younger children used older children to develop skills and acquire knowledge. Age mixing encouraged opportunities for creativity, helped match abilities, and fostered older children's sense of responsibility for younger…

Despite six decades of leading researchers' research findings upholding progressive, whole-language reading approaches, consensus is lacking. Pundits tend to discredit educational research. News media promulgate tougher standards while overlooking progressive classroom successes. Parents may fear children's exploration of a wide variety of books…

Teachers should stop teaching traditional school-room grammar entirely. There is no reason to wound youngsters with something they will never learn and never need. Instead, teachers should treat usage and mechanics in gentle, encouraging, nontechnical, and innovative ways. A communication correctly understood by a native speaker is grammatical.…

Excellence in undergraduate education became the first goal of SUNY President Shirley Strum Kenny's broadly-based five-year plan. Its capstone is the report "Reinventing Undergraduate Education." Kenny thinks freshman education can be improved by initiating block scheduling, interdisciplinarity, mentoring, and experiential and inquiry-based…

"In-basket" training is ineffective. The Annenburg Institute for School Reform suggests that principals learn most effectively in groups, foster more powerful faculty and student learning by focusing on their own learning, must move beyond their assumptions, and need more focused reflection. Strong leadership, rigorous planning, and protected…

Responding to local businesses' negative comments about area graduates' capabilities, White Plains (New York) Public Schools initiated a pilot work-based-learning program that clearly specified connections between high-school and workplace learning. Five case studies illustrate program goals achieved via individualized apprenticeship plans…

No external force or authority can make an organization excellent. Leadership's role is to persuade an organization's members to strive for excellence. This explains the failure of coercive state mandates for teacher evaluation, testing, academic standards, and foreign-language requirements. A new leadership model is desperately needed. (MLH)

Adolescence is a time of intense, often idealistic concern about the relationship of self to others. Yet educators hesitate to address high-school students about moral aspects of sexuality and marriage. Such reticence has a high price. Textbooks mistakenly convey self-interest as the sole cause of human behavior. (MLH)

Third International Mathematics and Science Study results show that high-scoring states and schools do not need standards; low scorers have too many other pressing problems to utilize standards. Recent studies indicate that the proportion of college students requiring remedial courses has been exaggerated by critics. (MLH)

Discusses a complicated appellate-court case upholding a Milwaukee high-school junior's expulsion for advocating computer hacking in a student newspaper. The decision is noteworthy for signaling a growing technology-related litigation trend, conflating the advocacy/incitement issue, and showing courts' decreasing tolerance for perceived threats to…

About 20% of Canadian children live in poverty. The idea that wealth influences achievement is being denied. Although the government promised that half the "fiscal dividend" would be reinvested in children, it held focus groups instead. Meanwhile, a research finding about poor parenting has grabbed media attention. (MLH)

To avoid long strings of browser addresses, a Florida multimedia instructor learned to create his own Web pages and jump pages (links to other sites). This article explains how he arranged for a Web server, assembled source materials, and adapted features of PageMill, a page-authoring software. (MLH)

Because traditional instruction ignores students' personal construction of mathematical meaning, mathematical thought development is not properly nurtured. Several issues must be addressed, including adults' ignorance of math- and student-learning processes, identification of math-education research specialists, the myth of coverage, testing…