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Substantial numbers of students who earn an associate degree from a community college accumulate more college credits than are required. This is an important phenomenon for at least two related reasons. First, it raises the issue of efficiency: Are students getting their degrees in the most expeditious manner, both in terms of time out of the labor market and in terms of the monetary cost of attaining the degree? Second, to what extent is the extra work undertaken by students beneficial to them, even when it does not contribute to degree attainment? This paper documents the phenomenon of excess credits by examining the credit distributions of six recent cohorts of students in one state's community college system. The analysis is limited to the records of those students who completed associate degrees. The main contribution of this paper to the existing literature is that it considers excess credits in the context of particular degree programs. I first examine the extent of excess credits overall in the community college system. Then I present case studies of individual degree programs to better understand the details of what may be generating the excess credits within these programs. The paper finds that excess credits accounted for about 12 percent of all college-level credits earned by students who completed a degree, with substantial variation among students in different programs. Among the excess credits of students enrolled in particular programs, most were spread out over a wide variety of subject-specific and general courses. Finally, while this paper does not seek to make any normative judgments on the value of excess credits, I discuss possible reasons that may contribute to excess credits and conclude with methodologies that individual colleges and college systems could employ to assess the extent and nature of excess credits for their students, thereby allowing practitioners to ascertain the relative value of excess credits in their systems. (Contains 9 tables and 4 footnotes.)

Families in rural communities are often poorly connected to schools due to challenges associated with geographic isolation, poverty, inexperienced staff, inadequate resources, scheduling challenges, and low parental education. This creates problems with the access, availability, and acceptability of services. Teachers in rural schools often have to extend their responsibilities to meet student's behavioral needs, and report feeling ill-equipped to provide focused services to students with learning and behavior concerns. Parents are essential partners for meeting the needs of students in rural schools; cross-system interventions in rural communities may be particularly beneficial for children, parents, and teachers. "Conjoint behavioral consultation" (CBC; Sheridan & Kratochwill, 2008) may address barriers and create meaningful partnerships between rural parents and teachers. In CBC: (1) Parents and teachers serve as joint consultees; (2) Problems are identified, defined, analyzed, and treated through mutual and collaborative parent-teacher interactions with the assistance of a consultant; and (3) Partnerships are formed, creating opportunities for families and schools to work together around a common interest and build upon strengths of family members and school personnel. The efficacy of CBC in settings where specialized consultation services are sparse (i.e., rural schools), and where students, families and schools are characteristically distinctive, has not been explored. This study investigates the preliminary effects of CBC on decreasing problematic behaviors for rural students at home and school. It also explores unique aspects of individual case studies and discerns elements of the rural experience that may influence CBC implementation and uptake. (Contains 2 figures and 3 tables.) [This paper was presented originally by the authors at the 2012 annual meeting of the American Psychological Association.]

Michigan's Local Government and School District Accountability Act of 2011 empowers the governor to appoint emergency managers (EMs) in financially-troubled school districts. EMs assume all powers of the superintendent and school board. They can reshape academic programs, nullify labor contracts, and open and close schools. This paper analyzes the law's political origins and early implementation. Relative to prevailing accountability mechanisms applicable to all school districts, in what respects are EM districts are more accountable, and in what respects are they less accountable? Our analysis reveals that although the law concentrates control over school operations, it weakens most standard dimensions of district accountability. (Contains 15 footnotes. Work for this article was supported in part by the Education Policy Center at Michigan State University.)

One of the State Board of Education's (SBE) strategic plan goals is to advocate for an effective, accountable governance structure for public education in Washington. The development of this goal comes from Board members' experiences over the last five years to understand and address the complexity of Washington's education system and their role in it. The Board has been engaged in many projects, including the successful work in accountability and new high school graduation requirements. Other projects have caused the Board to pause and reflect about its role as well as that of other agencies in areas such as systems planning. Several of those projects are examined through case studies in this paper. This paper is organized into the following sections: (1) What is Washington Trying to Achieve?; (2) Governance: a Definition, Literature Review, and Analytical Framework; (3) Education Governance in Washington and Other States; (4) Washington's History of Education Reform Efforts in K-12; (5) Washington Case Studies on Governance; and (6) International Education Systems Governance and How They Compare to the U.S. (Contains 20 resources and 37 footnotes.)

This is the third paper published by The Centre for Literacy in its Working Papers in Literacy series, which presents fresh perspectives on literacy-related issues. The topics are relevant both to other researchers, to practitioners in the field, and to policy-makers. This paper examines the behaviours and beliefs of a group of volunteer tutors to discover why they did not maintain close contact with their literacy organization. This study began with the assertion that tutors are important actors in the tutor-learner relationship, and that their beliefs and behaviour will affect the tutoring relationship. A better understanding of how and why tutors act in certain ways will help the volunteer programs improve training and support for their volunteers and could ultimately improve the quality of tutoring. After describing the tutors' behaviour in the matches with learners, the study draws a link from an apparent contradiction--that tutors desire to help their learners but are complacent about their learners' progress--to a belief system shared by these tutors. This shared belief system underlies their disinclination to receive support from the organization. The research was conducted using case-study methodology. Data were gathered during semi-structured interviews with eighteen tutors who were entering the program and being trained (4 individuals), those who had tutored for several months (10 individuals), and those who were learner-tutor coordinators (generally with a years' tutoring experience) (4 individuals). Participants in the first two groups were randomly selected, while in the last group all four learner-tutor coordinators agreed to participate. The four beliefs outlined in this paper are: (1) Tutors believe that a learner who does not succeed in a classroom learning format will be helped by one-on-one tutoring; (2) Tutors, while recognizing the wide variety of learner needs, rely on individual attention rather than specific training to function in the match; (3) Tutors value good will over good training; and (4) Tutors defend their volunteer activities based on perceived needs rather than demonstrable progress and results. The combination of these four beliefs creates tutors who feel inadequate yet who function independently because they are motivated and because they believe there is no one better volunteering for the job. These beliefs are traced back to the nature of the program: the volunteers have been told that they are essential to literacy provision, and they are not aware of other educational opportunities for their learners. Interview questions are appended.

Time regulates the lives of educators. Time on task, 45-minute classes, 2-hour literacy blocks, 10-week marking periods, and 40-week school years are central to teachers' lives and to the operation of schools. In contemporary schools, benchmarks, standards, promotion, retention, graduation, and ultimately school success are all intricately connected to time. Recently, politicians, policy makers, and educators have increasingly focused on what students should be able to do at certain points in time. Passing standardized tests, achieving grade-level standards, and attaining text-level benchmarks all involve temporal expectations. Time plays a significant role in the culture of schools and in the ways students and staff experience schools (Ben-Peretz & Bromme, 1990). As Zerubavel (1981) argued, "time seems to constitute one of the major parameters of the context on which the meaning of social acts and situations depends" (pp. 101-102). However, recent analyses have focused on time as a resource and have neglected the sociological and semiotic meanings that accompany time. Unlike earlier discussions of time, this paper makes a case for recognizing "time as context"--as a constitutive dimension of experience that informs the ways students make sense of literacy, schooling, and themselves. Time is important because long-term processes--such as literacy learning, identity construction, and school trajectories--all involve longitudinal meaning construction. As Bloome, Beierle, Grigorenko, and Goldman (2009) explained, "people take hold of time, they structure, organize, and represent it, give it meaning and social significance, and experience it both individually and collectively in terms of those meanings and social significances" (pp. 314-315). In this paper, the author uses a case study approach to explore various aspects of time as it relates to the specific learning trajectory and affordances of one low-income, African American student, Jermaine Hudson. The author argues that time is a dimension of the contexts in which Jermaine made sense of his world and himself. (Contains 6 tables and 5 figures.)

The top priority for the U.S. Department of Education's new Race to the Top-District (RTT-D) competition is to create personalized-learning environments to bolster student achievement: "Absolute Priority 1: Personalized Learning Environments. To meet this priority, an applicant must coherently and comprehensively address how it will build on the core educational assurance areas (as defined in the notice) to create learning environments that are designed to significantly improve learning and teaching through the personalization of strategies, tools, and supports for students and educators that are aligned with college- and career-ready standards (as defined in the notice) or college- and career-ready graduation requirements (as defined in the notice); accelerate student achievement and deepen student learning by meeting the academic needs of each student; increase the effectiveness of educators; expand student access to the most effective educators; decrease achievement gaps across student groups; and increase the rates at which students graduate from high school prepared for college and careers." Using online learning in blended-learning environments will be critical for most Local Education Agencies (LEAs) to realize this priority. As Innosight Institute has written in several reports, there are a growing number of schools and districts across the country that are implementing blended-learning models. Innosight Institute has collected dozens of case studies of blended-learning programs on its website. These profiles may be an important resource for those LEAs seeking to apply to the competition, as the profiles chronicle the history of how schools and districts started their blended-learning programs, the effect of these programs on student achievement, the blended-learning models they use, and the software or Internet tools that power these programs. This paper describes how personalized learning looks like in practice and discusses the essential elements of an effective transformation. (Contains 2 figures.)

Decades of research find that effective school leadership and access to high-quality early education are two of the most important determinants of educational outcomes. School principals affect both teacher and student performance and play an important role in turning around troubled schools. High-quality education, from prekindergarten (pre-K) through third grade builds foundational knowledge and skills that prepare students for long-term success. Although governors have acted in recent years to address these two issues separately, efforts to harness the potential of school leaders to promote high-quality education for young children have been more limited. Most states' principal preparation systems could be improved to better equip elementary school principals to evaluate pre-K through third-grade (P-3) teachers, support improvements in teaching and learning, and guide teachers in using curricula and assessments in the earliest grades. This issue brief makes the case for why governors should consider building elementary school principals' capacity as P-3 leaders and outlines specific state policy strategies for accomplishing this goal. To illuminate how this works in practice, a case study from Illinois highlights how this state is including early learning content in the principal preparation process.

This paper presents a case study in which the authors attempted to understand the impact, on student choice, of reforms in tertiary education in Australia, namely, a shift towards a demand-driven system and the blurring of the distinction between vocational education and training (VET) and higher education. The authors compared the advanced diploma and the associate degree in engineering and related technologies offered as a pathway to a four-year degree, using data available in October 2011 on the websites of providers and from the Victorian Government, the first jurisdiction to adopt an entitlement model and the state in which most mixed-sector tertiary institutions operate. The authors show that, while higher-level VET qualifications may come at a cheaper up-front cost, they are increasingly being seen as a poorer investment than a university course of study. In particular, the cost of delayed entry to the labour market, curriculum mismatch, and the greater ease of getting a loan for a university qualification will influence a student's decision to undertake higher-level VET qualifications. Appended are: (1) Overview of the operation of government-supported places and income-contingent loans; (2) The tuition costs a government-subsidised student has to pay to convert an advanced diploma or an associate degree into a bachelor degree in engineering, 2012; and (3) Tuition fees per year for Associate Degree in Engineering Technology at RMIT University. (Contains 1 figure and 14 tables.)

This paper explores the conceptual underpinnings of the routine disrespect shown to young children in everyday life in cultures around the world. General Comment 7 of the Committee on the Rights of the Child urges that the youngest children should be respected as persons in their own right, within an environment of reliable and affectionate relationships based on respect and understanding. This paper examines two case studies, from Germany and Israel, to show what such environments look like on the ground. A bibliography is included. (Contains 6 footnotes.)

This working paper focuses on some of the issues and challenges faced in developing early childhood programmes to promote racial and ethnic diversity in societies characterised by deep divisions and/or conflict. The central argument of the paper is that the development, delivery and evaluation of such programmes need to be informed by three core values: they should be children's rights-based, outcomes-focused, and evidence-informed. Northern Ireland provides a useful case study because its people are emerging from 30 years of armed conflict. The ability to study the development of an early childhood programme aimed at promoting understanding and respect for ethnic diversity in such a context raises a number of fundamental issues of relevance to a wide range of other situations and contexts. Paul Connolly is Professor of Education and Director of the Centre for Effective Education at Queen's University Belfast, and the founding Co-Director of the Joint Learning Initiative on Children and Ethnic Diversity. A bibliography is included. (Contains 8 figures, 1 table and 9 footnotes.)

The Indiana Choice Scholarship Program has the potential to be the largest school voucher program in the country. Though the authorizing legislation capped enrollment in the program at 7,500 for its first year (the 2011-12 school year), that cap was increased to 15,000 for this year, and will be removed for all subsequent years. With careful management, the program has the opportunity to infuse the Hoosier state with a level of choice previously unrealized across the nation. However, without some careful planning and thoughtful consideration of salient program design details and the informal market infrastructure necessary for the program to thrive, the Indiana Choice Program will not be able to reach its full potential. Private school choice in the United States, writ large, has not sparked the types of systemic changes that advocates envisioned when the first choice plans were enacted. Though the gold-standard analyses of choice programs have found positive results, they have been modest and mostly confined to the students participating in the program. When Milton Friedman first made the economic argument for school choice in the 1950s he envisioned choice and competition increasing quality and decreasing cost for education in both the public and private sector, as it has in the private markets of innumerable goods throughout history. However, it appears that for a variety of reasons, choice has not sparked the supply side responses that the economic models predicted. Why has this happened? Why has choice failed to live up to its hype? In short, functioning choice markets do not simply emerge from the ether. They must be cultivated, both on the demand and supply sides. Too often, advocates have pushed an "if you build it, they will come" program design that has neglected many of the necessary conditions for markets to function. Strong program design can establish the playing field on which choice and competition can drive change, but without the support of institutions and organizations within states, the innovative capacity of any program will be greatly curtailed. In this way, the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program can serve as an interesting case study in the cultivation of choice markets. The newness and enormous potential of the program offers a unique opportunity for a meaningful conversation on school choice markets, both how to design them and how to ensure that they function. By examining both program design and the emergence of the institutions and organizations that are necessary to make markets work, the Hoosier State can be used as a model for the potential for choice programs around the country. (Contains 9 footnotes and 2 footnotes.)

Preparing future citizens for postsecondary education and careers that span a continuum of sophistication is not a new topic in education. However, the rapid changes in technology and increased competition from industrialized nations have changed the landscape and meaning of college and career readiness. As part of a strategy to better prepare students, since 2005, 31 states have implemented college- and career-readiness standards (CCRS), with 20 states also requiring that students complete high school graduation requirements that will make them college and career ready (Howard & Madison-Harris, 2011). This briefing paper provides details on the meaning of college- and career-readiness standards, effective implementation of these standards, next steps in the implementation process, and progress being made by state departments of education (SDEs) in the southeast region toward this crucial objective.

This paper reviews evidence on the interplay between professional standards for teachers, the content of teacher education and educational sciences, and provides three case studies to illustrate these interactions from Estonia, Australia and Singapore. In particular, it investigates what aligning teacher education programmes to standards really mean; and what conception of educational sciences is reflected in the standards and the curriculum. Analyses suggest that alignment, as an explicit, direct and consistent correspondence, is difficult to achieve, in part due to different conceptualisations of professional knowledge. However, this paper argues that the main value of standards as policy tools lies in their capacity to create mutual dialogue between different artefacts (standards' requirements, curriculum, course descriptions, accreditation standards, etc.), as well as among stakeholders. Regularly renegotiating the standards as a result of such dialogue and reflections should be a crucial part of the policy process.

Employers in every sector have emphasized the need for a well-rounded, highly skilled workforce. Recent survey data indicates that over 90% of business leaders think American workers are not as skilled as they need to be. 1 According to the Business Roundtable, CEOs around the country have noticed a particular gap in "employability skills" such as effective communication, critical thinking, teamwork, and problem-solving. 2 To address this gap, youth development leaders, including those in the afterschool sector, have worked to provide high quality skill-building experiences inside and outside of the classroom. 3 Afterschool programs provide opportunities for career exploration, exposure, and hands-on learning focused on the cultivation of many of the skills desired by employers. Similarly, the workforce sector has sought to narrow the gap by providing programs and services to help job seekers attain and demonstrate these skills. Importantly, both sectors aim to provide opportunities for skill development to individuals from low-income families and communities, who may not otherwise have opportunities for high-quality skill development and are often disproportionally left out of the labor market. The workforce sector's goal of developing a better-prepared and highly skilled workforce is well aligned with the mission of the youth development field: to prepare young people to succeed. Despite their shared interests, however, the youth development and workforce sectors often operate in isolation, failing to leverage the capacities of the other. Given that afterschool is centered around youth development and that youth development goals have significant overlap with workforce development goals, there is an important opportunity to more strategically and intentionally align these systems. This white paper explores the ways in which the workforce sector's goal of developing a better-prepared and highly skilled workforce is aligned with the mission of the youth development field: to prepare young people to succeed. Specifically, this paper discusses the need for and benefits of better alignment across afterschool and workforce systems. (A bibliography is included.)

This study unearths and examines rich models of learning in which multiple institutions collaboratively play a role in promoting civic education. Using historical and ethnographic case study analysis, this paper addresses the research question: What is the role of community in civic education? Specifically, the author examines Hull House and the pioneering social settlement work of Jane Addams at the turn of the 20th century; democratic education for social change put into practice during the civil rights movement by Myles Horton, Septima Clark, Bernice Robinson, and others at the Highlander Folk School; and the Neighborhood Learning Community in St. Paul, Minnesota, a network of community institutions, schools, and higher education institutions which applies the lessons from Hull House and Highlander in its efforts to create a neighborhood culture of learning. Short overviews of these cases are given, as well as detailed lessons for the role of community in civic education. The cases in this study present important historical and contemporary models where educators commit to making change over longer periods of time; place a deliberate emphasis on comprehensive, relational, and public education; make learning relevant to people's everyday lives; recognize the creative powers of diversity through public work; utilize the talents and instincts of non-professionals; foster reciprocal relationships; and embrace flexibility and trust in the messiness of democracy. [This paper was produced by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), University of Maryland.]

The purpose of this exploratory study was to identify and describe some of the dimensions of scientific collaborations using high throughput computing (HTC) through the lens of a virtual team performance framework. A secondary purpose was to assess the viability of using a virtual team performance framework to study scientific collaborations using HTC. The authors chose to study two scientific collaborations, IceCube and the "Laboratory for Molecular and Computational Genomics" (LMCG), that differed across a number of characteristics such as membership size, research purpose, and range of scientific disciplines. The authors adapted an IPO ("input-process-output") framework developed from a synthesis of virtual team performance studies (Powell et al., 2004), using it as the basis for their analysis of virtual teams using HTC. The IPO model offers unconstrained conceptual categories, facilitating an exploratory approach to specifying the dimensions of virtual team performance. The virtual team performance framework appears to be a viable tool for studying collaboration in distributed cyberinfrastructure teams. The responses of focus group participants fit within IPO framework categories, with the exception of "communication" and "cohesion". The group discussions related to communication and cohesion focused on communication technologies, coordination, and culture rather on the specifics of communication and cohesion in the team. It is possible that the retrospective character of focus group discussion is not conducive to capturing these elements; observation of group processes over time and in different settings might be more promising. Two new subcategories emerged within the design category: leadership and membership size. However, more research is needed to expand and eventually validate key performance dimensions across various types of teams. This work demonstrates some potential application to education reform. HTC is an extremely fault-tolerant system--that is, it performs well without significant human intervention or interaction--and school district systems such as data warehousing, accountability reporting, video encoding or re-encoding, and analytics (e.g., business intelligence in dashboards) need to be fault-tolerant and update regularly. One of the challenges facing districts is that their current infrastructure designs are outmoded, while at the same time they have a growing need to implement longitudinal data systems to collect, manage, and use student, school, and teacher data (Thorn, Meyer, & Gameron, 2007). HTC has the capacity to handle the demands for parallel processing and robust systems--core aspects of sound education infrastructure. Focus Group Protocol is appended. (Contains 1 figure, 5 tables and 4 footnotes.) [Additional funding for this paper was provided by the Children First Fund: The Chicago Public Schools Foundation and the New York City Teacher Data Initiative.]

What is the "best" way to pay teachers? Should teachers be paid based only on their experience and education, or does this merely reward mediocrity? Would it be better to base teachers' pay on their performance in the classroom or their students' learning, or would this undermine cooperation among colleagues and encourage an unhealthy level of teaching to the test? There are no easy answers to these questions. This report reviews the history of teacher compensation plans and begins to shed light on the effects of compensation systems on teacher behavior through a study of middle-school teachers' responses to an alternative compensation policy, the Minneapolis Professional Pay Plan (Professional Pay). This study was conducted in Minneapolis from 2003 to 2005 using both qualitative and quantitative methods, and inductive and deductive inferential processes. Interviews with middle-school teachers, school administrators, and district personnel and a survey of middle-school teachers are the main data sources. Several obstacles to the policy's success emerged from the data including teachers' limited understanding of the policy, their unwillingness to surrender their professional autonomy in order to earn financial rewards, and their limited interest in financial incentives. Perhaps the most important and least recognized obstacle was the district's inability to credibly commit to Professional Pay. The inability of school districts to credibly commit has been largely ignored in the research literature but may be a significant factor in the failure of many policies to positively affect practice. While this study only looks at the Minneapolis case, it has implications for education policy more generally. The broader question is this: Can a public school district credibly commit to policies that, in order to be effective, require a long-term financial and political commitment? The answer to this question may very well be a resounding, "No." (Contains 9 tables and 4 endnotes.) [This paper was written with Sarah Butler Jessen.]

This working paper is part of a series on early transitions from "Young Lives," a 15-year longitudinal study of childhood poverty in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam. It explores the diverse experiences of 28 children from four contrasting communities in Peru as they start school. These detailed case studies highlight common problems: exclusion of certain parts of the population from pre-school services, lack of coordination between pre-schools and primary schools, issues with physical punishment and cultural diversity. It proposes four ways in which children's early educational transitions can be enhanced, looking at such factors as educational structures, curriculum planning and teacher training. (Contains 4 figures, 3 tables and 23 footnotes.)

This paper focuses on children with a migration background and conceptualises their migration experience as adversity. The paper adapts the resilience framework to understand how immigrant children can overcome adversity. The paper discusses policy models that can be derived from adopting a resilience approach to the measurement of immigrant students' integration prospects and proposes a policy analysis framework. The "CHARM" framework helps to assess the extent to which destination country policies and practices support the educational and socioemotional well-being of immigrant children. Namely, it evaluates whether policies to consider (1) Cumulative adversity; adopt a (2) Holistic approach; consider (3) Adjustment as a dynamic process; identify a (4) Relational development; and implement a (5) Multilevel approach. The paper finally applies the CHARM framework to the education policies of Ontario, Canada and underscores the relevance of applying the CHARM framework across countries and jurisdictions to evaluate education policies that can promote the resilience of immigrant children.

Diana Wilkinson, Chief Social Researcher with the Scottish Government, assisted National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) to facilitate a forum to discuss the development of national research priorities for the vocational education and training sector. This paper summarises Diana Wilkinson's impression of the forum and uses two contrasting case studies of Scotland and Australia to consider the extent to which it is feasible to align academic research investment with medium-term priority-setting. (Contains 13 footnotes and 1 table.)

This paper explores the ways in which school leaders are turning to student services staff as local experts in data analysis and use to meet the demands of high-stakes accountability. The authors have been collecting data, as part of a 5-year National Science Foundation-funded study, on how school leaders create data-driven systems to improve instruction at their schools. They found that while schools already had significant capacity to design curriculum-level interventions to address the needs of groups of students, leaders in the schools investigated turned to special education practices and professionals to provide the in-house expertise necessary to create a variety of student-level interventions. This paper provides a picture of the increased role that student services staff have had in developing and maintaining program- and student-level support programs. Specifically, it investigates two central issues: (1) the practices of student services staff provide a precedent for student-level intervention design; and (2) student services staff play new roles as data-savvy instructional leaders. (Contains 1 figure and 3 footnotes.) [This paper was originally prepared for the annual convention of the University Council for Educational Administration (San Antonio, Texas, 2006).]

This occasional paper presents Bank Street's approach as represented in a set of five interrelated principles. It begins by briefly describing the origins and rationale of teacher education at Bank Street. From this description are generated principles that emerge from Bank Street's history and practice, linking each principle to classroom images of teaching and learning. Enactment of these principles can and must vary in response to changing circumstances, needs, and mandates. This necessary variation highlights the guiding function of an explicit set of principles to govern and ensure the consonance, validity, and legitimacy of new practices. The five principles underlying the teaching of education are: (1) Education is a vehicle for creating and promoting social justice and encouraging participation in democratic processes; (2) The teacher has a deep knowledge of subject matter areas and is actively engaged in learning through formal study, direct observation, and participation; (3) Understanding children's learning and development in the context of family, community, and culture is needed for teaching; (4) The teacher continues to grow as a person and as a professional; and (5) Teaching requires a philosophy of education--a view of learning and the learner, knowledge and knowing--which informs all elements of teaching. These principles are interrelated and overlapping, each having equal power. This paper presents each principle, discusses its place in the education of teachers, and provides examples of how this vision of good teaching comes to life in schools and classrooms. Each example illustrates the saliency of one principle as well as its vital relationship to others.

Public and higher education alike have much to gain from serving the largest and fastest growing demographic in the United States. The Latina/o population in the U.S. is young and fervent and will continue to influence political, financial and educational communities, both geographically and socioeconomically. In this theoretical analysis and case examples, the authors apply Robert Ibarra's (2001) perspective on the development of Multicontextuality with Latina/os in educational spaces, focusing on leadership and examining the cultural wealth and contributions Latina/o leaders and educators bring to educational systems and communities. We argue for the development of future Latina/o leaders by examining the multicontextuality of Latina/o educational leaders in the P-20 pipeline as an untapped resource where they exhibit unique and diverse sets of abilities to respond to the trends in economic, civic, and personal spheres. Proficiency in multicontextual leadership advances the democratic, transformational, and distributive with ultimately a transformative leadership discourse in higher education, advancing the development of Latina/o's throughout the educational pipeline.

While promoting postsecondary credential completion is a national priority intended to help graduates secure good jobs, the value of credentials in the labor market from the perspective of employers is not well understood. Specifically, more attention is needed to understand how credentials align with employer needs. Through in-depth interviews with managers responsible for hiring information technology technicians, we examined their perceptions of associate and bachelor's degree holders in two contrasting labor markets: Detroit and Seattle. The study led to several key findings. First, across the two labor markets, employers expected some common qualities in both associate and bachelor's degree holders, including technical skills and knowledge, thinking skills, communication skills, and discipline. Second, while they expected some positive qualities in associate degree holders that were distinctive to this credential, many hiring managers also expected negative characteristics, such as a lack of academic ability, initiative, or skill. However, while both associate and bachelor's degrees provided relevant information about potential workers, employers did not expect the credentials to provide information about certain key qualities they sought in workers, including competency in customer service and teamwork, and personal interest in technology. Some of the qualities that employers expected in associate degree holders were linked to their local labor markets and their perceptions of the local community colleges. This study provides suggestions on how an understanding of the specific qualities employers expect in credential holders and of the role of the local labor market can help colleges better engage with employers and fine-tune their programs to more effectively meet students' and employer's needs. Descriptions of the Qualities Expected in Credential Holders and Sought in Information Technology Technicians are appended. (Contains 4 tables and 4 footnotes.)

A case study of one low income African American child, Peter Horner, is used to explore how children accumulate various forms of writing capital. Peter's development was tracked over 10 years, from first grade through high school. The construct of time is explored by examining how capital contributes to the construction of "habitus" (Bourdieu, 1971) and how habitus may or may not have privileged Peter at his urban high school and in his future. The construct of capital, as described by Pierre Bourdieu (1986), is applied specifically to the various forms of writing capital that Peter displayed across his educational trajectory. This paper uses the framework of writing capital to analyze Peter's writing and reveal the alignments, tensions, and disjunctures that existed between his success as a writer, his school success, and the ease with which his accomplishments extended into contexts beyond school. While Peter appeared to be developing various forms of writing capital and habitus as a writer, as evidenced by writing samples collected over time, structural and institutional constraints threatened to limit his ability to take advantage of this capital and enact the habitus he had assumed. The findings of this study challenge notions that unproblematically associate capital acquisition and embodied habitus with success in school and beyond. (Contains 1 footnote, 11 figures, and 6 tables.)

A long standing debate among policymakers as well as researchers is whether and how funding affects the quality of education. Often missing from the discussion is information about the costs of providing education at the school level and below, yet such information could impart a better indication of the linkages between outcomes and resources than is available with more macro-level data. In addition, because No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and state accountability systems often require reporting of performance at the grade or school level, micro-level cost information would be useful to school administrators as they try to allocate resources productively. In this paper, we analyze the challenges involved in establishing a system to track costs at the school, grade, and subject level that will fit the needs of both internal and external users. To begin, we review the literature on cost accounting that is relevant to micro-level costs and the research that analyzes sub-district level resources. Next, we describe general challenges that arise in reporting at the level of the school and below and we then discuss school-level reporting in practice. We follow with a case study of an improved reporting system that links resource use, student demographic characteristics, and student outcomes at the school, grade and subject level. We conclude with recommendations for states when constructing such systems. The following tables are appended: (1) Comparison of Approaches in Addressing the Challenges of Producing School-Level Reports; (2) Sources of Data for Pennsylvania School-Level Reports; (3a) Example of School Summary Report for Sample Elementary School; and (3b) Example of Fifth Grade Summary Report for Sample Elementary School.

This paper is a synthesis of case studies of four districts that implemented multifaceted reforms aimed at offering rigorous instruction in mathematics and science for all students as part of a National Science Foundation-supported partnership. A common theory of action aimed for a rigorous curriculum, professional development delivered close to the point of instruction, monitoring of instructional quality, and system coordination. Immersion units would offer an in-depth experience in scientific inquiry to all students. The theory of action was successful in many ways. Excellent access to top management allowed the partnership to assist with multiple aligned dimensions of instructional guidance. The biggest obstacles were turnover in district leadership, loose coupling across departments, attenuation of vertical alignment through overload of instructional guidance, and insufficient budget for adequate school site support (e.g., coaches). Greater coherence resulted from delivery of instructional guidance closer to schools and teachers, as with science immersion. The study suggests that complete, affordable packages of instructional guidance delivered to the school level district-wide might be the best model for district reform.

The findings of a cultural industries skills audit undertaken in 2008 in Katherine, Northern Territory, are explored. The case study focusses in particular on the practical challenges and implications of auditing skills in a diverse industry sector and considers the usefulness of such an audit in preparing an industry for predicted change. This paper is the result of a 2008 NCVER New Researcher Award. (Contains 2 footnotes and 4 tables.) [This research was commissioned by the Northern Territory Department of Employment, Education and Training and managed by CHARTTES Training Advisory Council. The project team was made up of Catherine Curry, Roxy Lancaster, Debra Bennett and Jen Richardson, with research mentoring support from Ruth Wallace and David Morgan.]

Roderick Watts and Omar Guessous of Georgia State University conducted exploratory research to investigate the link between math and civic engagement. Their research is based on an evaluation of the Young People's Project (YPP), a national program that recruits, trains, and deploys high school and college Math Literacy Workers for mentoring middle and elementary school students. The purpose of this study is to examine whether the Young Peoples Project, as a community-based math and social justice organization for youth, contributes to the math, academic, sociopolitical, ethnoracial identity, and positive youth development of participants. Five specific research questions addressed by this study were: (RQ #1) Program effect: Do YPP participants show more favorable outcomes than the two comparison groups on outcome indicators of interest? (RQ #2) Dosage effect: Do veterans show more favorable outcomes than novices on the outcome indicators of interest? (RQ #3) Program x dosage interaction: Is the dosage effect stronger among YPP participants than among the School Controls? In other words, is there an interaction effect between program membership and level of seniority? (RQ #4) Math--SPD link: Is there a positive relationship between math confidence and indicators of sociopolitical development? (RQ #5) Math--SPD x Program: Is this link moderated by group membership, such that YPP participants demonstrate a stronger positive relationship between math confidence and indicators of sociopolitical development than the School Controls (SC)? Participant in this cross-sectional study were Chicago-area residents in grades 8 and above who were administered a paper-and-pencil survey in a group format at the site of each YPP and After School Matters (ASM) program. YPP participants were encouraged to recruit a peer who did not participate in YPP to serve as matched comparisons. Additionally, ASM participants from three Chicago public high schools were recruited for participation in this study, to serve as an additional comparison group (N=73). There were a total of 196 participants. Each variable of interest was assessed using one or more self-report survey instruments that were answered on a numerical Likert scale. These included measures of social analysis, sense of urgency, societal involvement, cultural and ethnoracial identity. academic and math self-concept, and positive youth development. The five research questions were examined using Univariate Analysis of Covariance and Hierarchical Multiple Regression. Among the outcomes was a favorable link between YPP participation and aspirations for mathematics education, and another was evidence of sociopolitical development. The third was an exploration of other youth development outcomes of interest to the program and the researchers. Sense of Agency was positively related to math self confidence and negatively related to math self-doubt. Similarly, commitment to societal involvement activities was negatively related to math self-doubt. And in the only instance were the ethnoracial variables came into play, cultural pride reinforcement was found to positively correlate to math self confidence. The relationship between sociopolitical development and math confidence was consistently stronger among YPP participants compared to School Controls. This suggests that YPP contributed to a link between math knowledge or reasoning and to both sociopolitical agency and commitment; that is, YPP experiences are associated with the idea that "math is power." (Contains 14 tables and 9 figures.) [This Working Paper was produced by CIRCLE (The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement). For CIRCLE Working Paper 49, see ED494074.]

The convergence of US federal science and economic policy that began in earnest in the Reagan administration formed the first stage in an emerging post-Cold War drive toward technological innovation. A frenzy of new state-based initiatives now forms the Second Stage, further promoting universities as decisive tools for economic competitiveness. State governments have largely become the political environment in which new policy ideas are emerging, influenced by a sense of increased competition among states and other international economies for economic growth. The paper outlines the characteristics of this Second Stage, and offers short case studies of two influential HT initiatives in California--a leading HT state. Among the author's conclusions: HT economic activity is already relatively widespread among the various states (more so than perhaps previously thought); leading HT states rely heavily on their university sectors and a highly educated workforce, yet are increasingly importing talent and neglecting investment in the education and skills of their native populations; the long-term commitment of states to financially support the frenzy of HT initiatives is unclear; and state initiatives are rationalized by lawmakers as filling a need not currently met by the private sector or universities and, in part, as a response to a sense of competition between states, and thus far with only a minor concern for global competition. As this paper explores, the politics of HT--including the focus on university-industry collaboration and neo-conservative religious/moral controversies over stem cell research--is a significant factor for understanding how and why most states are pursuing the Second Stage. (Contains 6 figures and 55 notes.)

This paper draws on current research and analyzes participant interactions in a 12-week leadership online training course with students from 14 Latin American countries. The paper systematizes the experience of the Inter-American Institute for Social Development (INDES) and constitutes a case study of an experience in a regional, non-academic online training course. The research concentrates specifically on the effects of and influences on different types of interaction, particularly taking into consideration the intricacies and interrelations of participation, critical thinking, achievement and their relationship to gender. The paper quantifies student-to-student postings in the different online discussion conferences, relates the postings to activity types as well as learning outcomes, and gauges the levels of critical thinking in the postings. The analysis is carried out by gender in order to highlight similarities and differences between male and female participants. Finally, other forms of interaction (student-to-content, interface and, instructor) are briefly analyzed using student reports and surveys. Our results suggest positive influences of interaction for an online course, illustrated by positive correlations between grades for written course work and number of postings in the activity conferences as well as total number of postings in all conferences. Additionally, results also point to certain gender preferences for particular discussion forums, but due to the small sample size, no definitive conclusions could be made. Appended are: (1) Learning activity examples; and (2) Evaluation survey results. (Contains 5 footnotes, 9 tables, and 3 figures.) [This paper was produced by the Integration and Regional Programs Department, Inter-American Institute for Social Development (INDES).]

The developmental education process, as it is typically implemented in colleges across the country, seems straightforward: underprepared students are assessed and placed into an appropriate developmental course sequence designed to prepare them for college-level work; once finished with the sequence, these students presumably then move on to success in college. Analyses of student progression through developmental education reveal, however, that this seemingly straightforward process is rife with complexity and confusion, and results in poor outcomes for the majority of developmental students. Various explanations have been advanced to explain developmental students' lack of progression, including inadequate test preparation, insufficiently predictive exams, poorly aligned curricula, uninspiring skill-and-drill instruction, and the sheer length of time and financial resources required to finish a long sequence of courses (Edgecombe, 2011a; Grubb, 2010; Hughes & Scott-Clayton, 2011). Each explanation implies that the developmental system is broken and that one or more specific fixes will mend it. Yet underlying these issues is a deeper and more vexing question: "Why" is the system broken? Based on a case study of the City University of New York's six community colleges, this report proposes a new "opposing forces framework" for understanding the dysfunction of the developmental system. We identify three sets of opposing forces that shape developmental policy and practice: system-wide consistency versus institutional autonomy, efficient versus effective assessment, and promotion of student progression versus enforcement of academic standards. Within each set, both goals are important and worthy, both are championed by key stakeholders in the system, and both have direct impacts on developmental policy. However, while the two goals may not be absolutely irreconcilable, they tend to work in opposition to one another and may create frustration on the part of administrators and faculty, confusion on the part of students, and poor outcomes overall. We begin the report by outlining the opposing forces framework and by discussing how the tensions inherent in the framework are apparent at the national level. We then use CUNY as a case study to describe in detail how each of the three tensions shape developmental policies, practices, and student progression patterns. Finally, we provide suggestions on how colleges nationwide can bring apparently opposing forces into alignment and thus create a system that works to meet all its stakeholders' goals. Appended are: (1) Technical Definitions; (2) Qualitative Methodology; (3) Report Data; (4) Developmental Course-Taking Requirements; (5) Persistence and Attrition; (6) Progression Through Developmental Education; (7) Additional Analysis--Persistence by Progression Category; and (8) The Role of Sequence Length. (Contains 5 tables, 11 figures, 9 boxes and 37 footnotes.)

It is estimated that approximately 3 million students are enrolled as international students, and it is possible to project that this number may reach more than 7 million by 2025. As global demand exceeds the supply, competition is building for the best of these students. Some countries (or regions) clearly envisage the opportunity this represents and have been strongly stimulating student mobility. There is a race for "brains", be it for professors at the end of their careers looking for new professional opportunities and/or the opportunity to return to their native countries, or for researchers at the beginning of their careers, looking for a place that might offer them a better future, or even for students, who seek more appealing alternatives. How will Brazil fare in this competition for talent? If it is to internationalize its higher education study programs, Brazil must deal with a number of practical problems, including a lack of specific policies and guidelines. Bureaucracy, for instance, is one major problem. A foreigner who comes to live in Brazil faces many obstacles, mainly due to the bureaucracy involved in everything from getting a Visa through the Federal Police office, to opening up a bank account, renting an apartment, registering at school, amongst many other processes and regulations that make it difficult for anyone to come and live in Brazil. One rarely finds a course offered in English or Spanish in a Brazilian university and the selection of faculty are normally held in Portuguese. Currently, there are no plans or projects at either the federal or state level, to address these obstacles. This should be a major concern to all who hold positions of responsibility in the educational process, as Brazil is not keeping pace with higher education reforms found globally. The internationalization movement is growing, and Brazil must actively seek reforms to keep pace with economic competitors.

In this study, we examine the role of academic preparation in the transition from community colleges to four-year institutions. We address two specific questions: To what extent do academically unprepared students transfer to four-year institutions? And, can positive experiences in community colleges diminish the role of inadequate academic preparation? The results, which are based on analyses of Florida's unit record data of first-time community college students, indicate that a substantial proportion of students who enter community colleges academically unprepared do indeed transfer to four-year institutions. Moreover, successful completion of intermediate outcomes--such as passing college-level math and writing courses, meeting specific credit thresholds, and earning an associate degree--enhances students' probability of transfer. However, the ability of community colleges to mitigate the negative effects of inadequate academic preparation is limited: successful completion of even the most demanding intermediate outcomes does not alleviate the negative consequences of entering higher education unprepared. The policy implications of these findings are discussed. (Contains 15 footnotes, 2 figures and 5 tables.)

This paper examines how middle school students developed understanding of transformational geometry through design activities in Escher's World, a computationally rich design experiment explicitly modeled on an architectural design studio. Escher's World was based on the theory of pedagogical praxis (Shaffer, 2004a), which suggests that preserving linkages between epistemology and pedagogy is a critical step in developing computational learning environments based on professional practices such as architectural design. Here, I examine this theory by analyzing the pedagogical processes at work in Escher's World, focusing on three precursors to the development of mathematical understanding: (a) enactment of participant frameworks from the design studio, (b) the autoexpressive properties of the computational tool being used, and (c) the expression of students' interests through design activities. I take a mesogenetic approach to this analysis of learning, using accounts of students' design work based on extensive field notes to examine how these precursors to mathematical understanding interacted over extended design activities. I present a case study of the work of one student in Escher's World and use quantitative analysis to help demonstrate theoretical saturation for the grounded theory I develop. I conclude by discussing implications of and for the theory of pedagogical praxis: that developers of learning environments based on design activities may need to pay careful attention to linkages between the epistemology and practices of design in creating innovative learning environments, and that adapting existing practices from the design studio may be one particularly effective approach to that challenge. Geometry questions are appended. (Contains 15 figures, 4 tables, and 8 footnotes.) [The research reported in this paper was also supported by the LEGO Corporation, the MIT Media Laboratory Things That Think Consortium, and a Spencer Foundation/National Academy of Education Postdoctoral Fellowship.]