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  For decades we've been studying, experimenting with, and wrangling over different approaches to improving public education, and there's still little consensus on what works, and what to do. The one thing people seem to agree on, however, is that schools need to be held accountable—we need to know whether what they're doing is actually working. But what does that mean in practice?   High-stakes tests. Lots of them. And that has become a major problem. Daniel Koretz, one of the nation's foremost experts on educational testing, argues in The Testing Charade that the whole idea of test-based accountability has failed—it has increasingly become an end in itself, harming students and corrupting the very ideals of teaching. In this powerful polemic, built on unimpeachable evidence and rooted in decades of experience with educational testing, Koretz calls out high-stakes testing as a sham, a false idol that is ripe for manipulation and shows little evidence of leading to educational improvement. Rather than setting up incentives to divert instructional time to pointless test prep, he argues, we need to measure what matters, and measure it in multiple ways—not just via standardized tests. Right now, we're lying to ourselves about whether our children are learning. And the longer we accept that lie, the more damage we do. It's time to end our blind reliance on high-stakes tests. With The Testing Charade, Daniel Koretz insists that we face the facts and change course, and he gives us a blueprint for doing better.  

The Modern Language Journal has long been an important venue for the publication of research and reflection on the teaching and learning of foreign languages (FL) in classroom contexts. In this article, we offer a perspective on the contemporary FL classroom, informed by a descriptive survey of all studies that took place in FL classes that were published in The Modern Language Journal (MLJ) between 2001 and 2014 inclusive (N=97). This yielded a profile of FL classrooms in terms of geographical locations, languages being taught, the amount and distribution of instructional time, and the age and language backgrounds of the students. The findings revealed that FL environments benefiting from research investigations in the MLJ typically involve older learners in on-site (rather than virtual) classes that afford limited exposure to the FL, which was typically English (in non-English-speaking countries) and French, German, or Spanish (in English-speaking countries). We consider the implications of these findings for the study of FLs in the future and identify aspects of FL classrooms that merit greater research attention as the MLJ moves into its second century.

Purpose This study is a quantitative exploration of a new construct the authors label as “academic culture (AC).” Treating it as generalized latent variable composed of academic press (AP), disciplinary climate (DC), and teachers’ use of instructional time, the purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of this construct to be a key mediator of school leaders’ influence on student learning. The study is guided by three hypotheses. Design/methodology/approach Responses by 856 elementary teachers from 70 schools to an online survey measured the three components of AC along with school leadership (SL). Provincial tests of writing, reading, and math were used as measures of student achievement (SA). Social economic status (SES) was used as control variable for the study. Data were summarized using descriptive statistics and correlations were calculated among all variables. Analyses included intra-class correlation analysis, regression equations, confirmatory factor analysis, and structural equation modeling. Findings Evidence confirmed the study’s three hypotheses: first, AP, DC, and instructional time formed a general latent construct, AC; second, AC explained a significant proportion of the variance in SA, controlling for student SES; and third, AC was a significant mediator of SL’s influence on SA. Concepts and measures of academic optimism (AO) and AC are compared in the paper and implications for practice and future research are outlined. Originality/value This first study of AC explored the relationship between AC and SA. Although at least two AO studies have included measures of distributed leadership, minimal attention has been devoted to actually testing the claim that AO is amenable to the influence of explicit leadership practices (as distinct from enabling school structures) and is a powerful mediator of SL effects on student learning. Addressing this limitation of AO research to date, the present study included a well-developed measure of leadership practices and assessed the value of AC as a mediator of such practices.

Exposure to teachers and teaching-related activities is vital for young children’s learning. When COVID-19 closed schools, teachers responded with a mix of live- and prerecorded lessons and one-on-one communication with students, which necessitated shifts in planning time. The current study identifies pre-COVID predictors of time teachers devoted to each of these teaching-related activities to illuminate actionable levers for supporting educators during widespread educational disruption. Teachers with higher prepandemic job commitment devoted more overall time to pandemic-induced remote teaching. Teachers’ prepandemic executive functioning and observed classroom instructional and organizational quality—features of successful teachers during normal times—predicted more during-pandemic time remote teaching, while teacher older age and having more high-needs students was associated with less remote teaching time. These results contribute to an emerging literature that spotlights potential promising avenues for supporting teachers via professional development during normal times as well as in future widespread educational disruptions.

We examined the influence of teachers’ use of instructional time on students’ learning within the context of a randomized controlled trial investigating the effects of a content-area reading comprehension intervention. Participants were 8th grade social studies teachers who had their classes randomly assigned to either Promoting Acceleration of Comprehension and Content through Text (PACT) or business-as-usual (BAU). In both conditions, the same social studies content was the focus of instruction. Thirty-five 8th grade teachers (18 female, 17 male) audio-record instruction in both PACT and BAU classes for the duration of the 6–8 week intervention. Instruction was coded on five dimensions: interactive instruction, teacher silence, noninstructional activities, video usage, and neutral class time. Social studies knowledge acquisition was measured amongst 2786 8th grade students. Findings indicated that teachers spent more time engaged in interactive instruction when delivering content-area instruction in PACT classrooms as compared to BAU classrooms. Further, instructional behaviors were significantly related to changes in content knowledge acquisition in the BAU classes. In the treatment condition, teachers’ instructional behaviors were not significantly related to changes in content acquisition, except for noninstructional activities and non-content related video, which both had negative effects. Our findings suggest that while interactive instructional time remains important, the instructional methods utilized during this time are equally (if not more) impactful on student achievement.

The 55th Annual PDK Poll finds that a wide majority (66%) of adults say teachers should have a substantial say in what’s taught in public schools, more than say so about school boards, local residents, or lawmakers. Support for teachers also is apparent in another result from the 2023 PDK Poll: 67% of respondents support increasing local teacher salaries by raising property taxes. That result reflects the public’s broad sense that public school teachers are undervalued, underpaid, and overworked. At the same time, more than half of Americans support shifting to a four-day school week in their community, nearly twice as many as said so two decades ago. And structurally, beyond a four-day week, the poll finds that about six in 10 adults support other changes in how schools operate — longer school days and/or a longer school year — as ways to try to improve student learning outcomes. On another topic, results show widespread support for schools conducting mental health assessments of students. The survey was produced by Langer Research Associates for PDK International, with data collected June 16-25, 2023, in English and Spanish, among a representative, random national sample of 1,002 adults.

Working with elementary students with disabilities, we used alternating treatment designs to evaluate and compare the effects of 2 computer‐based flash card sight‐word reading interventions, 1 with 1‐s response intervals and another with 5‐s response intervals. In Study 1, we held instructional time constant, applying both interventions for 3 min. Although students completed 6 learning trials per word during each 1‐s session and 2 trials per word during each 5‐s session, results showed similar acquisition rates for 1‐s and 5‐s words. During Study 2, we held learning trials constant (3 per word) and allowed instructional time to vary. When we measured learning using cumulative instructional sessions, the interventions appeared to cause similar increases in acquisition rates. When the same learning data were measured and plotted using cumulative instructional seconds, all participants showed greater learning rates under the 1‐s intervention. Discussion focuses on how measurement scales can influence comparative effectiveness studies.

Recess is an integral part of the school day where children are afforded the opportunity to create and organize games, socialize with their peers, and explore nature. When implemented effectively, recess has the potential to offer significant academic, physical, and social benefits (London, Westrich, Stokes-Guinan, & McGlaughlin, 2015). However, the amount of time allocated to recess in elementary schools across the United States has significantly declined over the past two decades. A reduction in play time can be attributed to increased educational mandates, which have lead to vigorous and ongoing debates about the important role recess plays in elementary schools. Thus, this quantitative study examined the effect of recess on fifth grade students' time on-task in an elementary classroom. Participants on- and off-task behaviors were observed and documented on a task frequency chart prior to and after recess. Findings from the study indicated that providing fifth-grade students with daily recess significantly increased on-task behaviors in the classroom.

This study compared the academic performance of students on the 2019 South Carolina Palmetto Assessment of State Standards (SCPASS) by the instructional time configuration used and explored the relationship among the variables of gender, race/ethnicity and poverty on this performance. Results of 25280 seventh-grade student social studies test scores from 112 middle schools, as well as information regarding each school’s instructional time configuration, were analyzed. While controlling for poverty, students in schools using instructional time configurations with the least amount of social studies class time per week had the highest performance levels. Additionally, White students scored significantly higher on the test than Mixed students, Mixed students scored significantly higher on the test than Hispanic students, and Hispanic students scored significantly higher on the test than Black students regardless of the instructional time configuration used.

The present study evaluated the effects of different types of teacher commands on response latency for pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students. Two different types of commands were assessed: alpha commands and beta commands. Research on instructional time in schools shows that loss of instructional time during transition periods may result in decreased academic achievement (Berliner, 1990). The current study evaluated the effects of both alpha and beta commands on response latency within a multiple baseline design across participants for students who did not respond adequately to teacher-led transitions. Results indicated that both alpha and beta commands were effective for all participants for reducing response latency, including a participant with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Initial results also demonstrated generalization of response latency to non-targeted commands in the classroom.