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WE PRESENT AN ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK for use by fellows of the Fogarty International Center--sponsored Advanced Certificate Program in Research Ethics for Central and Eastern Europe to identify gaps in the public policies establishing research ethics review systems that impede them from doing their job of protecting human research subjects. The framework, illustrated by examples from post-Communist countries, employs a logic model based on the public policy and public management literature. This paper is part of a collection of papers analyzing the Fogarty International Center's International Research Ethics Education and Curriculum program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advances in online learning have benefited rural special education teacher preparation programs through increased recruitment, access, and collaboration. This paper describes how additional challenges, such as monitoring teacher candidate use of evidence-based practices, can be addressed through a digital teaching platform. Project REACH online is a freely available website developed under a grant from the U. S. Department of Education. The platform includes information on 67 evidence-based practices and six formative assessments aligned with professional standards. The assessments, designed to further and measure teacher candidate skills, mirror daily classroom tasks, such as planning before instruction and reflection after instruction on the impact on student learning. Assessments are aligned with Common Core Learning Standards and include tasks, such as applying Universal Design for Learning to instructional plans, field-testing reports, and annotating student work. Faculty benefit from the constant stream of formative assessment data at their fingertips. For teacher candidates, the platform provides a vehicle for learning and tracking progress toward goals through surveys, feedback requests, and digital badges. The platform increases interactions among teacher candidates, graduates, and faculty and extends collaboration to content experts and school partners. Preliminary research suggests that teacher candidates report variance in efficacy for teaching students with disabilities related to their program, general or special education. Data may be helpful in revising courses and program sequences to foster greater teacher efficacy and abilities to use evidence-based practices to ensure all students in inclusive settings learn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background/Context: The lack of court-ordered support for race-based policies that maintain and create integrated schools has forced communities of color to seek other avenues to obtain equitable education, such as school choice. Individual states and the federal government, as seen in grant provisions through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, are encouraging the expansion of choice at the very time that options for increasing student diversity, particularly racial diversity, are being narrowed by the courts. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: The article uses critical race theory to examine the outcomes of specific school reforms, based on market theory models of school choice, that were designed to alleviate schooling inequities in urban districts. Setting: The context of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, serves as a microcosm of urban districts that have embraced school choice to create more equitable schooling options. Milwaukee, like most metropolitan areas, has a history of court-ordered desegregation that served as a temporary solution to racially segregated schools. Given the federal and district court turn from supporting race-based desegregation policies in schools, Milwaukee and other metropolitan districts are looking for new models to serve students of color in their districts and cities. Research Design: This article is a conceptual paper that incorporates data from a variety of sources to support the authors' conclusions. Data Collection and Analysis: Data for this project were taken from the U.S. Census Bureau, documents from newly created small high schools, such as Web sites and curriculum designs; current newspaper articles discussing issues of small high schools; archival newspaper articles documenting the creation of the 1990 choice and charter programs; professional experiences as a member of the Bill and Melinda Gates institutional selection and small-school team support system; and an empirical study that documents teachers' attempts to provide curriculum and instruction in newly created small schools. Conclusions/Recommendations: In combination, these data sources tell the story of market theory reforms that will continue to struggle to meet reformists' goals to serve all Milwaukee populations so long as policy makers and the courts continue to deny the irrefutable power that race and class exercise in parental choice in U.S. urban schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper explores an instructive case in which two potentially opposed reform theories converge on schools, in order to understand how productively or unproductively the two theories coexist. We attempt to answer the following questions: Can these two reform theories coexist, or do they get in each other's way? In what ways, if any, do the two complement each other? Separately, or together how do they affect instructional practice and the school-level conditions that support teaching and learning? Finally, can policies and leadership, in this case reflecting two such different reform theories, provide mutually supporting conditions for teaching and learning in urban schools? Setting: The theories are analyzed as they occurred over the 1990s and into this century in three middle schools in one New York City Community School District. Research Design: The study utilized a qualitative multiple case study design. Three middle schools within one district were sampled using criteria related to student population, school structure, and configuration of resources such as time and staff Data were collected over three years during three site visits per year and included extensive interviews, observations, and analysis of pertinent documents. Conclusions/Recommendations: We argue that the reform theories primarily complemented one another in this case. In the schools, differences in steps taken by school leaders and staff to realize the first reform theory enabled schools to respond productively to, rather than resist, district initiatives based on the second theory. The sophistication of the district's vision for teaching and learning (both for students and adults), combined with a flexible approach to implementing the second reform theory, reduced the likelihood of conflicting reform messages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]