Many educators, parents, and students are upset with the National Collegiate Athletic Association Initial Eligibility Clearinghouse's rejection of some high school graduates' acceptable coursework. The NCAA should stop trying to dictate high school course content, increase scrutiny of its members, tighten academic requirements for on-campus…

Responds to the most commonly asked questions and criticisms regarding the Third International Mathematics and Science Study's assessment of students at the end of secondary school. Answers cover differences in age and grade levels, differences in enrollment rates, definitions of the U.S. advanced mathematics population, unbelievable numbers,…

Even a moderate number of teachers lacking college minors constitutes a problem for schools. Out-of-field teaching occurs in over half of U.S. secondary schools (rural and urban, affluent and low-income). The source of this problem lies not in teachers' educational attainment, but in lack of fit between teachers' field of training and their…

The best teachers succeed in developing student creativity while maintaining orderly classrooms, being taskmasters liked by their students, balancing expectations and frustrations, and helping students develop skills in real-life learning situations. Resolving such teaching dilemmas is like balancing round stones. Classroom life requires…

The Texas Scholars Program, a joint business/education venture, is a low-cost program that motivates the "forgotten majority" (lower ranked students) to complete a rigorous academic curriculum preparing them for the labor market or postsecondary education. Since 1989, Eastman Chemical Company business leaders have been "recruiting" eighth graders.…

Paul Ciotti's monograph "Money and School Performance" exposing the "desegregation debacle" in Kansas City (Missouri) Public Schools is an improperly aimed salvo in the "money matters" debate. Actually, money should not be thrown at politically dysfunctional schools with incompetent teachers, administrators, and board members operating under a…

Discusses an unsuccessful lawsuit brought by Margaret Boring, an acclaimed high school drama teacher in Buncombe County, North Carolina. She was transferred to a middle school for allegedly violating the school's "controversial materials" policy after students performed an expurgated version of Lee Blessing's "Independence." Judges disagreed over…

In the grade 12 portion of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, Canadian students performed better than other participating G-8 countries. In fact, Canada scored consistently above the international mean for all three age groups tested. However, some educators and reformers have expressed dissatisfaction with these results. (MLH)

Researchers in molecular biology are discovering an increasing genetic basis for a wide range of mental diseases, moods, behaviors, and personality traits. Findings are creating the context for a new sociobiology favoring a genetic interpretation of human motivations and drives. Genetic engineering will give some people unprecedented power over…

Intelligence-friendly classrooms require a teaching/learning process governed by extant knowledge and theories about developing human beings' intellectual potential. Guidelines are based on setting a safe emotional climate, creating a rich learning environment, teaching the mind-tools and skills of life, developing learners' skillfulness,…

The realization that teaching demands more than a sharing of information and testing for recall springs from an ever-increasing understanding of intelligence as modifiable, multiple, and multifaceted. Basic assumptions are that traditional methods are inadequate for some students; teaching is a strategic act of engagement; and changing one's…

Children lacking sufficient mediated learning experiences (MLEs) are ill-prepared to handle the cognitive challenges confronting them at school and cannot benefit even from hands-on learning experiences. Reuven Feuerstein's theory of MLE holds that our cognitive abilities are modifiable, that we can change the course of a child's early cognitive…

A "successful intelligence" intervention improved school achievement for a group of 225 ethnically diverse third-graders, both on performance assessments measuring analytical, creative, and practical achievements and on conventional multiple-choice memory assessments. Teaching for triarchic thinking facilitates factual recall, because learning…

Creating and sustaining school programs that cultivate a wide range of human potential and simultaneously develop the abilities and dispositions required by a robust democratic society is obstructed by a supporting narrative that is weakly sustained in the surrounding environment. Stressing test scores, economic utility, and the "one best method"…

A commonly held notion of how earlier generations of immigrants were educated--often used as the chief argument supporting English immersion--is a myth. Far from succeeding by immersing themselves in English, immigrant groups did much worse than the native-born; some groups, particularly Italians, did much worse than others. Research findings are…