Discusses the standards movement, several standards categories (content, performance, equal-opportunity, and world-class), state and professional standard-setting activities, ongoing controversies, teacher participation opportunities, and need for public support. The New Standards and Equity 2000 projects provide linkages to standards-based reform…

Title II of Goals 2000 created the National Educational Standards and Improvement Council (NESIC), a federally funded agency to devise national content and performance standards in key academic subjects and certify state-submitted standards. Since Republicans have taken over Congress, this council is finished. Any private successor must mount…

Criteria, not uniform standards, are appropriate for schools, since neither available resources nor socioeconomic levels are uniform. Education's aim is not to train an army marching to the same drummer. Teachers' challenge is to provide conditions fostering the growth of personal characteristics that are socially important and personally…

The process of instituting standards is well under way, thanks to mathematics teachers' efforts, the Bush Administration and governors' agreements about establishing national educational goals, and President Clinton's 1994 Goals 2000 legislation. There is no danger of a nationally imposed curriculum. States are using the standards process in…

Summarizes a large-scale, systematic study that described and analyzed instructional practices in about 140 classrooms located in 15 poverty-area elementary schools. Teaching for meaning, or instruction promoting comprehension and conceptual understanding, was compared to more conventional methods. Students exposed to meaning-oriented instruction…

The surest way to improve schooling for 12 million children in poverty is to get them better teachers. The problem is selection, not training. "Star" urban teachers persistently engage their students, protect and enhance student learning opportunities, easily apply generalizations, succeed despite students' life conditions, genuinely respect…

Teachers for Chicago is a graduate-level program addressing the need to select, train, and retain talented, dedicated newcomers for urban schools. It was conceived as a teacher preparation program combining robust academic preparation, an internship, support from experienced mentors, and employment incentives. A second-year evaluation survey…

Districts cannot afford to buy all the "stuff" (teaching pictures, puzzles, dittoes, worksheets, cutouts, games, storybooks, and science props) needed by inventive teachers. Districts should allow kids to discover their own stuff and study in the community, group students across grade levels, reuse and share materials, cannibalize old kits, and…

There are over 64,000 items available at the Springfield (Missouri) Public Schools'"etc." Center--a supplementary materials warehouse designed to encourage recycling and enhance teachers' curricular repertoire. The idea was hatched by a concerned parent. Staffed by a director and volunteers and funded partly by outside user fees, the center is…

The Gift-in-Kind Clearing House is an innovative service that funnels surplus inventory, equipment, and supplies donated by business and industry to schools, colleges, and nonprofit organizations in the two Carolinas. Corporations receive tax incentives for their outdated products, which schools can often obtain at 10 percent of normal cost. (MLH)

Examines three San Diego initiatives exemplifying innovative types of school-community partnerships: the executive-driven Hamilton Center social services model; the Crawford Cluster Connection, a family stabilization consortium that stressed professional collaboration; and the Central Elementary School multiethnic program, built on family…

Because journals' requirements vary, would-be authors should target journals meeting their own goals, study editors' expectations, and try to meet them. Educators should also consider the journal's refereed status, whether it employs a research format or publishes themed issues, the acceptance rate, turnaround time, suggested article length, and…

Arts education instills creativity, problem solving, discipline, and cooperation in young performers. Competencies learned in one art form are in some sense generic and transferable to other subjects. However, championing schooling in the arts on utilitarian grounds is misguided. The National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for…

Recommends many books for summer reading enjoyment, concentrating on historical and contemporary fiction. Different cultures clash in William T. Vollman's "Fathers and Crows" and John Demos's adventuresome "Unredeemed Captive." Other suggestions: "Snow Falling on Cedar Mountain" (David Gutterman) and "Foxfire" (Joyce Carol Oates). For professional…

The modern school reflected modern society and the nuclear family; today's school mirrors the kinship structure and values of postmodern society and the permeable family. Assumptions of sociological differences, particularity, and irregularity are supplanting modernist beliefs in social progress, universality, and regularity. Children's competence…