Several years' experience with the NEA School Renewal Network discloses six necessary conditions for successful interactive networking: encouragement of affinity group development, equal portions of "high touch" and "high tech," the availability of qualified facilitators, an empowering network structure, a distributed expertise focus, and maximum…

Until teachers change their curriculum, they will be unable to rid their classrooms of coercion causing too many students to adopt adversarial behavior. Quality School curriculum replaces regurgitation of bare facts. All available information on study topics should be at hand during tests; no student should suffer academically for forgetting a…

Student perspectives on school and learning are remarkably similar to teachers' own views. Teachers want to be respected and to work with students who care and exhibit humor, openness, consideration, and active involvement in subject-area content. Students say they want these same things, including a safe, tension-free environment. (seven…

Although prenatal drug exposure places children in high-risk categories, educators must guard against preconceptions regarding outcomes. Environmental influences play a crucial role in determining long-term outcomes, ranging from minimal to severe. Effective intervention entails prevention at all levels, combined with a comprehensive approach.…

If the medical profession has been caught off guard by the climbing number of cocaine-exposed babies, educators are stupefied. Teachers must become ware of some classic symptoms of drug-damaged children, such as hyperactivity, inability to concentrate, unpredictability, and poor coordination, so that they can alter their teaching strategies. (MLH)

Opening up advanced placement English to all students willing to undergo a rigorous summer and yearlong regimen of writing and reading provided a Richmond (California) high school teacher with some positive insights about cooperative learning activities for mixed-ability students. Giving students the chance to work at the highest academic levels…

Describes an education professor's efforts to equalize opportunities for a blind student teacher in her reading instruction class. The class was better for sighted students because of the blind student's presence and the modifications made to accommodate her lack of sight. Accommodation challenges are even greater for elementary teachers with…

As success of one Toyota-managed auto plant shows, U.S. workers can produce as effectively and competitively when given good, work-specific training and a well-managed environment. By blaming their own faltering performance on inadequate work force skills, the nation's top chief executives have found a cheap, convenient way to scapegoat U.S.…

Current federal efforts to reform U.S. education overemphasize competition, measurement, and the education-work relationship; distract educators and educational policymakers from tackling structural inertia problems besetting schools; and engender cynicism and passive resistance in already overworked teachers. America 2000 fails to use serious…

A recent Rockefeller Foundation report concluded that a lively life in the humanities depended on vigorous engagement with reading, writing, and cultures. Collaboratives for Humanities and Arts Teaching (CHART), created to foster humanistic education, targets classrooms of average students from impoverished urban and rural districts. Such…

Research conducted by the Center for Arts in the Basic Curriculum shows arts-integrated schools are the most promising way to improve American education. CABC's work is based on three principles: arts are cognitive domains triggering multiple forms of learning; effective arts education is an important educator model; and arts education will…

In postindustrial society, flexibility and creativity become more valuable in the work place. "Artists" of every stripe are people who share qualities such as imagination, capacity to work hard, and personal vision. Arts are a necessity in curriculum, not a frill. Cutting arts denies students a learning avenue that promotes the kind of individual…

As a dramatic arts professor's experience shows, children's lack of arts education inhibits their ability to communicate ideas spontaneously, respond with feeling, and discern quality from commercial junk. By contrast, a role-playing/research activity with 15 youngsters helped students express themselves creatively and build community in a…

Far too many school boards and administrators deny that music is one of the "basics." Few U.S. students have access to institutional or private music lessons that involve a balanced, sequential curriculum. Where music programs have been cut, economic crisis has often remained. Of all curriculum disciplines, music has the most experience with…

Recent efforts to make the mathematics curriculum consistent with the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics "Standards" will fail unless teachers' beliefs about mathematics change. Teacher educators, school officials, political leaders, and teachers themselves must first acknowledge a serious problem with the way our society views…