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A comprehensive model of evaluating teaching advocates the use of multiple sources of information to confirm decisions. Each source–students, self-reports, colleagues and chairs, and evidence of learning–has particular strengths and limitations. The weight of the accumulated results leads to the most valid personnel decisions. Using a mixture of evaluation sources can also lead to greater improvement in teaching because different sources are helpful to different teachers and can help identify weaknesses in different areas of instruction.
Four major sources of information are used to determine the effectiveness of an individual teacher: student evaluations, teacher self-reports, colleague/department chair evaluations, and evidence of student learning. Each of these approaches can be useful in making personnel decisions (salary, promotion, and tenure) or in improving teaching. Each approach has strengths and weaknesses that must be kept in mind and that make it imperative to combine evidence for the best judgments.
Student Evaluations
Evaluations of teaching by students have become important and a frequently used method of assessment, the rationale being that students, and only students, are constant observers of what happens in the classroom. Moreover, only students can answer questions about the effects of instruction on them. Research over the past forty-five years has generally demonstrated their validity, reliability, and utility in improving instruction; this same body of research has shown that systematic course evaluations by students can provide useful information in assessing teachers for salary, promotion, and tenure decisions.
Although typically administered during the last week or two of the semester (but prior to final exams and grades), rating forms are on occasion given at midsemester so the instructors may make immediate adjustments for a particular course. Machine-scored forms are frequently used in order to process the large amounts of college and department data, but the open-ended comments solicited by most rating forms often provide teachers with more specific suggestions for improvement. The questions asked about teaching or the course commonly fall into these categories: organization or planning, teacher–student interaction or rapport, clarity or communication skill, workload and course difficulty, grading and assignments, and student self-reported learning. In addition there are always questions asking students to provide a global or overall rating of the course, the instructor, or the instruction received.
Many colleges have assembled their own student rating forms and some allow students to make their ratings by computer. Commercial forms published by the Educational Testing Service (SIR II) and Kansas State University (IDEA) have for many years provided colleges with score summaries, comparison information, and research reports.
Any use of student evaluations should take into account the vast amount of evidence from research (more than two thousand studies in the Educational Resource Information Center (ERIC) system since 1971). This evidence provides the foundation for guidelines for the proper use of student evaluations. Some of the guidelines that institutions should keep in mind follow.
1. Use several sets of evaluation results. Because an individual course may not accurately reflect a teacher’s performance, a set of results based on several classes should be used for personnel decisions. Some research suggests using at least five classes.
2. Have a sufficient number of students evaluate each course. Averaging responses from enough students will minimize the effects of a few divergent opinions. Generally, fifteen students is a sufficient number, assuming they represent at least half of the enrolled students in a class. Research also has shown that student evaluations are consistent over short periods of time.
3. Consider some course characteristic in interpreting ratings. Although any single characteristic does not have a great effect, a combination could effect a teacher’s evaluation. Research shows, for example, that small classes receive slightly higher ratings and that subject areas such as natural sciences and mathematics receive somewhat lower ratings. Courses that are college required, but not to satisfy the requirements of a major or minor, are also rated lower.
4. For personnel decisions, emphasize global ratings and estimates of learning. Research has shown that an overall or global rating correlated best with measured student achievement–more highly than ratings dealing with different teaching styles and presentation methods. Likewise, student estimates of their learning in a course are good reflections of instructional effectiveness.
5. Student evaluations can improve instruction, depending on how instructors use the results. Good evaluation forms help teachers diagnose their strengths and weaknesses. Studies indicate that some teachers can use the results directly, while others may need to discuss the results with a colleague or a professional consultant.
6. Give those being evaluated an opportunity to respond to evaluation results and to describe their teaching in writing. Teachers being evaluated for personnel purposes should have a chance to describe what they were trying to accomplish in the course and how their teaching methods fit those objectives. The self-report of teaching, which can be part of a teaching portfolio, gives teachers an opportunity to make their own best case.

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Public schools in the United States operate in a pluralist democracy that enables competing interests to gain access to the decision-making process. Quite frequently, conflicts over educational issues occur. Political leaders and educational professionals formulate policies that attempt to mediate competing views and contending interests. There are, however, three understandings about the interaction between interest groups and the public educational enterprise. One school of thought finds that the school system benefits from interest group activities as it incorporates diverse demands. Another perspective views interest groups as autonomous centers that can undermine the schools’ legitimacy. A third perspective observes a reconfiguration of the goals and functions of interest groups in an era in the early twenty-first century of “postmaterialism.”
Diversity
Pluralistic representation, according to many researchers, can strengthen public schools. Historically, school responsiveness to its diverse clients is seen in the development of an increasingly professionalized system. In his study of three central-city districts from 1870 to 1940, Paul Peterson observed in 1985 the “politics of institutionalization,” where clients who had previously been excluded from school services gradually gained admission to the system. As schools expanded their client base, Peterson saw no single interest as dominant over all school issues. Although though the business elites tended to prevail in fiscal issues, working-class organizations exercised substantial influence over compulsory education. Because diverse actors and interests contributed to an expanding school system, the real winners were the school system and its broadening clientele. The urban
public school system practiced the politics of nonexclusion, gradually extending services from the middle class to the low-income populations, and from groups with roots in the United States to various immigrant and racial groups.
Conceptually, Peterson’s analysis is consistent with the tradition of pluralist scholarship in political science as exemplified by Robert Dahl’s classic 1961 work Who Governs?. From a policy point of view, interest group competition has encouraged the school bureaucracy to adopt objective, universal criteria in distributing resources to neighborhood schools.
School responsiveness to its diverse clients also improves equal educational opportunity for the disadvantaged since the 1960s. In 1986 Gary Orfield and Susan Eaton discussed “group rights” politics in securing governmental resources for low-income inner-city African Americans in the Atlanta metropolitan area. Further, using data from the U.S. Office of Civil Rights in districts with at least 15,000 students and 1 percent African-American enrollment, Kenneth Meier and colleagues examined in 1989 the practice of second-generation discrimination in the classroom following the implementation of a school desegregation plan. They found that African-American representation on the school board has contributed to the recruitment of African-American administrators, who in turn hired more African-American teachers. African-American teachers, according to the study, are crucial in reducing the assignment of African-American students to classes for the educable mentally retarded. African-American representation in the instructional staff also reduces the number of disciplinary actions against African-American students and increases the latter’s participation in classes for the gifted. Luis Fraga and colleagues found a similar situation in 1986 with Hispanic students in thirty-five large urban districts. Thus, “group rights” politics is critical to ensure allocative practices that benefit the disadvantaged.
Autonomous Power Centers
Although interest group politics may facilitate collective concerns, organized interests can become autonomous power centers that undermine the organizational capacity of the school system. A major interest group is the teacher union. William Grimshaw’s 1979 study of Chicago’s teacher union suggested that the union had gone through two phases in its relationship with the city and school administration. During the formative years, the union largely cooperated with the administration (and the mayor) in return for a legitimate role in the policy-making process. In the second phase, which Grimshaw characterized as “union rule,” the union became independent of both the local political machine and the reform fractions. Instead, it looked to the national union leadership for guidance and engaged in tough bargaining with the administration over better compensation and working conditions. Consequently, Grimshaw argued that policymakers “no longer are able to set policy unless the policy is consistent with the union’s objectives” (p. 150).
Organizational growth, in Bruce Cooper’s view, has led to problems of “mature institutions,” where union leaders have to mediate trade-offs between quality and supply. Seeing a new trend in school competition, Susan Moore Johnson observed the need for replacing “collective bargaining” with “reform bargaining.”
Another organized interest is the increasingly well-organized taxpaying public, a substantial portion of which no longer has children in the public schools. The aging population has placed public education in competition with transportation, public safety, community development, and health care over budgetary allocation. Discontent with property taxes became widespread during the time of the much-publicized campaign for Proposition 13 in California. According to Jack Citrin, between 1978 and 1983, of the sixty-seven tax or spending limitation measures on state ballots across the nation, thirty-nine were approved. During the 1990s, business-organized lobbying groups have been successful in pushing for higher academic standards and stronger accountability measures. In districts where public schools fail repeatedly, political leaders tend to seek for alternative ways of delivering schooling services, including privatization or creating charter schools. At the federal level, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 that was passed in January 2002 allowed for public school choice as a corrective action to schools that fail repeatedly.

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The landscape of higher education in North America first began to take shape at the start of the colonial period as religious communities and individual religious leaders realized the need to bring Western education to what was for them a newly discovered land. The motivation for the education varied. Some communities began schools as a means for training religious leaders. The first college, founded in Massachusetts Bay Colony, was Harvard. Evolving from a Puritan tradition now incorporated into the United Church of Christ, Harvard published a brochure in 1643, explaining the college’s purpose as “to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches.”
Religiously affiliated schools and colleges expressed their missions in different manners as they developed in the colonies and across the frontier; all pursued their work with energetic mission. For some, the educational mission was to assure that “children of the faith” had the opportunity to grow intellectually in remote locations across the frontier. For others, the mission was to create educational opportunity for all persons in order that they might develop their God-given intellect. Often the two approaches were combined, as noted in the challenge Methodist Episcopal Bishop Francis Asbury presented to every Methodist congregation in America in 1791: “give the key of knowledge in a general way to your children, and those of the poor in the vicinity of your small towns and villages” (Michael et al., p. 13).
Religiously affiliated colleges often combined the mission of education with the desire to train individuals in religious practice and to evangelize others. This mission is reflected in words by Disciples of Christ educator Alexander Campbell (1788–1866), “Colleges and churches go hand in hand in the progress of Christian civilization” (p. 61).
Religiously affiliated educational institutions often developed in response to social changes. For example, the world’s first college charted to grant degrees to women was Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia (1836). At the conclusion of the Civil War, the Freedman’s Aid Society responded to absence of educational opportunity for newly freed slaves by creating institutes and colleges throughout the South. Many of these institutions continue their critical role in education in the early twenty-first century. Often church-related colleges began as academies or seminaries and then grew to college or university status. Many had short lives, closing as the result of social, demographic, political, and–quite often–financial reasons. Some colleges severed their relationship with the religious communities and continue in the twenty-first century as quality independent institutions. Among these are Vanderbilt University, Auburn University, University of Southern California, Oberlin College, and Princeton University. In 1881, 80 percent of the colleges in the United States were church related and private. In 2001, 20 percent of the colleges–approximately 980 institutions–had connection to a religious tradition. The “Digest of Educational Statistics, 2000,” indicates that sixty-six religious groups in the United States currently sponsor colleges or universities. These institutions enroll more than 1.5 million students.
Characteristics
Religiously affiliated colleges and universities defy a monolithic description. They are as diverse as their religious traditions and the higher education scene in the United States. Although most are liberal arts colleges with enrollments between 800 and 2,000 students, church-related higher education also includes large research universities (Boston University, Notre Dame, for example), medical colleges, professional schools, two-year colleges, theological seminaries, and Bible colleges. Many religiously affiliated colleges regularly are highly ranked in various “best colleges” ratings in the United States.
Among the nearly 1,000 colleges and universities with religious affiliation are 65 institutions affiliated with the Jewish faith. Although most of these institutions are rabbinic and talmudic colleges and institutes, some are major well-known universities and colleges in the United States. Yeshiva University, founded in 1886 in New York City, is recognized as the oldest and most comprehensive educational institution under Jewish auspices in America. Yeshiva and Brandeis University, founded in 1948, regularly are listed among the top universities in the United States. Jewish educational institutions in the United States reflect a centuries-long commitment to learning. Like most religiously affiliated colleges and universities, Jewish colleges and universities offer degrees in several fields of study. Many Jewish colleges and universities have joined in partnership through the Association of Colleges of Jewish Studies, an organization committed to serving the educational and religious needs of the North American Jewish community.
While related to and supported by specific religious traditions, most colleges welcome students from a variety of faith traditions–or no faith tradition. The student bodies include representation from ethnic and international communities. The institutions’ student-centered focus generally assures most students will graduate in four years.
The typical religiously affiliated college is residential, although some colleges have developed satellite learning and evening programs to meet the needs of nontraditional students. The residential approach is characterized by a commitment to a student-centered learning and living community where curricular and cocurricular programs combine to emphasize a holistic approach to human development and understanding. The colleges invest significant financial and personnel resources to foster personal worth and dignity within a diverse and just community, leading to an emphasis on lifelong learning, social responsibility, and service. Community service is an integral part of the colleges’ philosophies.

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The American Association for Higher Education (AAHE) is an independent professional membership organization that promotes change and reform in higher education, fosters quality teaching and learning at the college and university level, and promotes public awareness of the value of higher education in the United States. The AAHE’s objectives include identifying and analyzing critical problems, trends, and developments in higher education and seeking constructive solutions; helping to coordinate the efforts of educational institutions and agencies at all levels; encouraging the improvement of professional work in all areas of higher education; and developing a better understanding by the general public of higher education and of college teaching as a profession. In pursuing these goals, the AAHE provides a forum for the expression of ideas relating to higher education and public policy.
Program
The AAHE National Conference on Higher Education is the best-known regular activity of the association. Held annually in March, the conference has established itself as a central forum for addressing the most pressing issues facing postsecondary education in the United States. Other annual AAHE conferences include the Assessment Conference and the Conference on Faculty Roles and Rewards. The first is sponsored by the AAHE’s Assessment Forum, which promotes the development of new and effective approaches to faculty, student, and institutional assessment. The second conference is sponsored by the AAHE Forum on Faculty Roles and Rewards, which was inaugurated in 1991 with the mission of reexamining methods of communicating faculty expectations and evaluating faculty rewards and remuneration.
Since 1993 the AAHE Quality Initiatives program has explored the application of continuous quality improvement principles to postsecondary education. In 1996 the Quality Initiatives program began holding an annual Summer Academy at which teams of six to ten people from up to thirty-five institutions gather to discuss and develop programs to enhance the quality of undergraduate education.
In early 2001 the AAHE launched a major diversity initiative aimed at studying and addressing the impact of race and ethnicity on student choice and learning in higher education. One of the goals of the initiative was to develop strategies for increasing the success of minority college students. In particular, the diversity initiative promoted the importance of including diversity issues in college curriculums and the removal of barriers to the success of minority students.
Other AAHE programs include the Service Learning Project, a two-part initiative that promotes the integration of service learning in all disciplines; the project includes the preparation and publication of an eighteen-volume series addressing community-based learning. The AAHE’s Teaching Initiatives program helps institutions improve the effectiveness and status of college-level teaching. AAHE members involved in this initiative work to promote the view that postsecondary teaching is important scholarly work and to generate dialogue about the value and effectiveness of teaching in institutions of higher education.
AAHE publications include the bimonthly Journal of Higher Education, a scholarly journal published since 1930, and the bimonthly magazine Change, published in conjunction with the Helen Dwight Reid Education Foundation. Change features articles on new trends in higher education and analyzes the implications of new educational practices. The AAHE Bulletin, published every month from September through June, is a newsletter for members that features interviews, reports, practical articles, and news about AAHE activities.
In 1991 the AAHE’s National Teaching and Learning Forum began a major joint venture with the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) Clearinghouse on Higher Education to publish and disseminate important research literature on various topics in higher education. The AAHE also publishes numerous books, monographs, and papers on topics of concern to the higher education community, many in collaboration with other publishers and organizations. In addition to these, special publications are produced in conjunction with current AAHE projects or in areas where a need for additional information has been determined. All AAHE publications are available to the association’s members free or at a reduced cost. Some are available electronically via the AAHE website.
Special projects consistent with the AAHE’s goals are undertaken with funds from outside sources and through partnerships. Notable among these projects is the Urban Universities Portfolio Project: Assuring Quality for Multiple Publics, a three-year effort begun in 2000 in partnership with Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) and the Pew Charitable Trusts. The Portfolio Project aims at helping urban institutions of higher education create institutional portfolios and innovative auditing processes that can be effectively communicated to the public. Such projects underscore the AAHE’s concern for the teaching-learning process as the center toward which a major part of its activities are oriented.

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Studying the seo basics can at first be a frightening task. You’d need to know the terms, how engines like google work, tips on how to optimize, then you’ll be confronted by the larger phrases like on web page optimization or key phrase research. I admit, dealing with those terms you’d be more than daunted by the seemingly complex artwork of SEO.

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Educators have examined the impact of media on learning since at least 1912, when the American psychologist Edward L. Thorndike recommended pictures as a labor saving device for instruction. Five questions about media and learning will be briefly examined. The first section will define media and summarize the results of research on learning from media, the relative cost of media use, and the impact of media on access to education. The second section describes new research on the economic benefits of instructional media, including suggestions for “cognitive efficiency” studies. The third section presents new information about learning problems caused by poor design of instructional media “displays.” The fourth part will examine claims that new media enhance student’s motivation to learn. The final section will describe work on technology integration that focuses on learning how to solve problems.
Definitions and Summary of Research
Media are generally defined as the means by which information is conveyed from one place to another. In the past century, various forms of media have been used to convey instruction and to support learning. Examples of instructional media include traditional means of delivering instruction (chalkboards, textbooks, overhead projectors, and teachers), mass media used for education (newspapers, movies, radio, and television), and the newer “electronic” instructional media (computers, interactive video, and multimedia systems). All instruction requires the selection and use of at least one medium to deliver instruction. Many alternative media and mixtures of media may be chosen for any given learning goal and group of students. Thus, research questions have compared the learning benefits of various media and mixes of media for different types of learning goals and students at different ages and aptitude levels. Thousands of studies have been and continue to be conducted.
Do some media produce more learning than others? In his 2001 book Learning from Media, Richard E. Clark concluded that there are no learning benefits from any specific medium or mix of media. He summarized the research on this issue in an analogy that is often repeated: “The best … evidence is that media are mere vehicles that deliver instruction but do not influence student achievement any more than the truck that delivers our groceries causes changes in our nutrition. Basically, the choice of vehicle might influence the cost or extent of distributing instruction, but only the content of the vehicle can influence achievement” (p. 13). While some media will not convey certain types of information necessary for learning (for example, newspapers cannot transmit sound or “real-time” visual events), any necessary information can be conveyed by a number of media (sound and visual events can be conveyed by many media other than newspapers). A more positive way to state this conclusion is that educators can expect similar levels of learning from a great variety of media provided that essential instructional methods are used. When more than one medium can provide the instructional method needed for learning, the choice of medium is based on expected economic benefits such as the per-student cost of instruction, not learning benefits. An alternative view was expressed in 1994 by Robert B. Kozma, who contended that media and method should not be separated.
Media and method. The key issue here is that when media are used for instruction, they may often be confused with the instructional methods and information they convey. For example, computer-based instruction is often thought to be highly “interactive” because computers permit high levels of exchange between student and computer-delivered instructional programs. Yet most media permit interaction, although some media do so more quickly and economically.
Any medium seems to be able to increase learning provided that the information content and instructional methods they convey are adequate to support student learning. The existing research suggests that when learning is influenced by external events, those events must support the use of mental processes that are required for learning goals by students who are unable or unwilling to provide them for themselves. The specification for these external events is what Clark called an “instructional method.” Instances of common instructional methods are learning plans, examples, and practice exercises with interactive, corrective feedback. Since a variety of media will present any of the common instructional methods required to learn, the benefits of media are not in their impact on learning but instead in their economic impact and their capacity to increase access to educational information and instructional programs.

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The International Reading Association (IRA) is a nonprofit professional organization that seeks to promote high levels of literacy by improving the quality of reading instruction. The association works to achieve this mission by studying the reading process and teaching techniques, serving as a clearing-house for the support and dissemination of reading research through conferences and publications, and actively encouraging a lifetime reading habit. The association is concerned with reading at all levels–from the school readiness stage through college and adult learning.
The five organizational goals of the association are: (1) professional development to enhance and improve professional development of reading educators worldwide; (2) advocacy to provide leadership in support of research, policy, and practice that improves reading instruction and supports the best interests of all learners and reading professionals; (3) partnerships to establish and strengthen national and international alliances with a wide range of organizations; (4) research to encourage and support evidence-based policy and practice at all levels of reading and language arts education; and (5) global literacy development to identify, focus, and provide leadership on significant literacy issues.
History and Development
The International Reading Association was established in 1956 through a merger of two existing groups, the National Association for Remedial Teachers and the International Council for the Improvement of Reading Instruction. The membership has increased from about 5,000 in 1956 to nearly 90,000 in 2002. A headquarters office was first established in Chicago, but was moved to Newark, Delaware, in 1961. IRA’s Government Relations and International Development divisions are located in Washington, D.C., and an editorial office for the journal Lectura y vida is located in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Projects and Programs
The association publishes six peer-reviewed journals. Issued monthly from October to May are The Reading Teacher, which reports on research and practice at the elementary level, and the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, which focuses on information relating to middle school, secondary, college, and adult levels. Reading Research Quarterly is oriented toward reading theory and research and is published in both print and electronic formats. Lectura y vida is a Spanish language journal published in Argentina four times per year. Reading Online is a free Internet-based interactive journal for literacy educators at all levels. Peremena is published quarterly in English and Russian for literacy educators in newly emerging democracies in eastern Europe and elsewhere. The organization’s bimonthly newspaper, Reading Today, provides coverage of the reading profession and activities of the association. The association’s active publishing program, which includes a list of more than 200 print and nonprint publications, produces an average of twenty new books and other resources each year, and supports a full-service online bookstore.
An annual convention is held each spring in either the United States or Canada. This five-day program of scholarly and social events attracts some 18,000 dedicated professionals from throughout the world. The association also sponsors a biennial world congress to promote global cooperation and the dissemination of information. In addition to these regularly scheduled conventions, many regional conferences, seminars, and meetings are held.
The association has embarked on a series of comprehensive projects to expand global literacy in both industrialized nations and developing countries. The Reading and Writing for Critical Thinking (RWCT) Project has grown from nine to twenty-four participating countries since its inception in 1997. This project links educators from North America, Europe, and Australia with those from emerging democracies in central and eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The Language to Literacy Project in Africa will help to advance literacy in several African nations through professional networking, community development, and increased access to technology.
Through research, the International Reading Association provides a cornerstone for professional development and influence. This includes the creation and dissemination of position papers, collaboration with a wide range of organizations throughout the world, and the active support of research through grants, awards, and the prestigious annual Reading Research Conference. The association also speaks for its members before many government bodies, which has led to increased funding for reading programs, expanded professional development opportunities for members, and the development of new legislation.
Organizational Structure
The International Reading Association serves members at local, state, provincial, national, and international levels through more than 1,250 councils and forty-two national affiliates. The ultimate governing body of the association is the Delegates Assembly, which convenes each year at the annual convention and is made up of representatives from the councils and affiliates. During the year an elected board of directors, made up of three officers and nine directors, controls the activities of the association. An executive director and a staff of 100 people carry out the daily business of the organization.
Membership in the association is open to any individual interested in the field of reading. Membership options allow members to receive a choice of professional publications and discounts on association publications, conferences, and services.

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The ubiquity of “common” schools in the United States belies both the long effort to establish a system of publicly supported elementary and secondary schools and the many controversies that have attended public schools before and since their creation. The belief that public, or free, schools and pauper schools were synonymous terms, and that such schools were only for children of the poor, long hampered the acceptance of the idea that publicly supported schools could and should exist for all children, regardless of social class, gender, religion, ethnicity, or country of origin. Moreover, the European and colonial insistence that responsible parents need concern themselves only with the education of their own children through the avenues of the family, church, or the voluntary efforts of like-minded citizens only slowly gave way to the conviction that publicly supported common schools might serve all children equally, and in so doing advance the moral, social, and economic interests so vital to the nation.
The common school movement took hold in the 1830s, and by the time of the Civil War organized systems of common schools had become commonplace throughout most of northern and midwestern states. Expansion of common school systems into the southern and far-western states progressed at a slower rate, but by the opening years of the twentieth century publicly supported systems of common schools had become a cornerstone of the American way of life. However, the emergence of a system of public schools across the nation was neither an inevitable nor an uncontested movement. Moreover, its survival into the future may prove to be as problematic as was its development in the past.
Colonial and Republican Schooling
From the earliest days of American settlement, education has been a concern. Colonists up and down the Atlantic seaboard established local varieties of both fee and free schools as community conditions, benevolence, and population increase seemed to warrant. However, the Puritans who established the New England colonies displayed a special eagerness to provide for education and literacy as bulwarks against religious and cultural decline. In 1635 Boston town officials saw the need to hire a schoolmaster “for the teaching and nurturing of children with us” (Cremin 1970, p. 180). The Boston Latin Grammar School opened the next year, along with the founding of Harvard College.
Other New England towns moved haltingly toward providing support and encouragement for formal schooling in the same period. The famous Old Deluder Satan Act of 1647 reflected the urgency felt by some Puritan leaders. While not requiring school attendance, this pronouncement by the Massachusetts General Court mandated that towns with fifty or more families were to make provision for instruction in reading and writing, and that in communities of a hundred households or more, grammar schools should be established that would prepare boys for entry into Harvard College. Although noncompliance could result in a fine levied against a town, not all towns adhered to the requirements of the enactment. Throughout the colonial period, provisions for schooling remained very much a matter of local, and somewhat haphazard, arrangements.
Town schools in New England had their parallel in the form of local schools set up by transient schoolmasters and various denominational groups who filtered into the Middle Atlantic colonies and the southern regions of the country. The general attitude in many parts of the American colonies was framed by Virginia’s governor, Sir William Berkeley, who in 1671 wrote that in his colony, education was basically a private matter. Virginians, he said, were following “the same course that is taken in England out of towns; every man according to his own ability in instructing his children” (Urban and Wagoner, p. 22–23).
The coming of the American Revolution and the influence of Enlightenment ideas began to challenge the laissez-faire doctrines of the colonial period, however. Recognizing that the dictum of “every man according to his own ability” might work rather nicely for the economic elite but not for the mass of the population (or for the health and survival of the emerging nation), another Virginia governor, Thomas Jefferson, took the lead in setting forth plans calling for more systematic and encompassing educational arrangements in his native state. As part of a massive reform package, In 1779 Jefferson proposed A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge. Jefferson’s general plan envisioned public support for secondary schools and scholarships for the best and brightest students to attend the College of William and Mary. But the foundation of his system was basic education for the mass of the population.
Jefferson called for the division of each county into wards, or “little republics,” and the creation therein of elementary schools into which “all the free children, male and female,” would be admitted without charge. These publicly supported elementary schools would equip all citizens with the basic literacy and computational skills they would need in order to manage their own affairs.

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The International Association for Educational Assessment (IAEA) was conceived as an international association of measurement agencies in 1974 at a meeting at Educational Testing Service (ETS) in Princeton, New Jersey. Later that same year a preparing committee, representing various geographic regions, met at CITO, the Institute for Educational Measurement in the Netherlands, to formulate the plans for the association.
In 1976 the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) admitted IAEA to C (information sharing) status as a nongovernmental organization (NGO). In 1981 UNESCO admitted IAEA to B (consultative) status.
Purpose and Objectives
The broad purpose of IAEA is to assist educational agencies in the development and appropriate application of educational assessment techniques to improve the quality of education. IAEA’s main objectives are to:
• improve communication among organizations interested in educational assessment through the sharing of professional expertise, conferences, and publications, while providing a framework that includes cooperative research, training, and projects involving educational assessment;
• make expertise in assessment techniques readily available for the solution of problems in the field of educational evaluation;
• cooperate with other organizations and agencies having complementary interests;
• engage in other activities leading to the improvement of assessment techniques and their appropriate use by educational agencies throughout the world.
Membership
IAEA has mainly three groups of membership: primary organizations, affiliate organizations, and individuals. Primary organization members are not-for-profit organizations, often associated in one way or another with ministries of education, which have educational assessment as their primary function. Affiliate organizations are those that make a major use of educational assessment techniques, or financial agencies that devote a large part of their budgets to work involving educational assessment. Individual members are those with a professional interest in assessment who may not be associated with an organization that has educational assessment as a primary concern. An executive committee whose officers and members are elected by the primary organization members governs IAEA. A subscription to the journal Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy and Practice is included with membership.
Activities and Projects
IAEA organizes annual conferences on assessment themes of international significance. Rotated on a geographic basis, a primary organization member in a region assumes responsibility for organizing the conference. IAEA has focused on topics such as standard setting, school-based assessment, public examinations, and admission to higher education.
In cooperation with UNESCO, IAEA organizes roundtables on the impact of assessment on education. The roundtables bring experts from designated geographic areas together to share information about topics of mutual interest, such as “The Impact of Evaluation and Assessment on Educational Policy,” “The Impact of Examination Systems on Curriculum Development,” and “International Comparisons of Student Achievements.” Since its inception IAEA has conducted through its members a number of projects for UNESCO and the World Bank.
The executive Secretaryship of IAEA is located at CITO, The Netherlands.

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At the turn of the twenty-first century the rate of sexual intercourse among U.S. teenagers has declined; teen contraception rates, particularly condom use, have increased; and, as a result, teen birthrates declined during most of the 1990s.
Support for sexuality education also seems to be at an all-time high. A poll jointly conducted in 1999 by the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) and Advocates for Youth showed that 93 percent of adults supported teaching sexuality education in high school and 84 percent supported teaching sexuality education in middle school/junior high school. And although most Americans believe abstinence should be a topic in sexuality education, the poll indicates that they reject abstinence-only-until-marriage education that denies young people information about contraception and condoms. The poll and subsequent focus groups demonstrate that many American parents do not see a conflict between providing information about abstinence and providing information about contraception in sexuality education programs. For these parents, it is not a matter of either/or–they want both.
The Basics of Sexuality Education
Human sexuality encompasses the sexual knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, values, and behaviors of individuals. Its various dimensions include the anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry of the sexual response system; identity, orientation, roles, and personality; and thoughts, feelings, and relationships. The expression of sexuality is influenced by ethical, spiritual, cultural, and moral concerns.
Sexuality education is a lifelong process that begins at birth. Parents, family, peers, partners, schools, religion, and the media influence the messages people receive about sexuality at all stages of life. These messages can be conflicting, incomplete, and inaccurate. SIECUS, along with many other national organizations, believes that all people have the right to comprehensive sexuality education that addresses the biological, sociocultural, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of sexuality from the cognitive domain (information); the affective domain (feelings, values, and attitudes); and the behavioral domain (communication, decision-making, and other relevant personal skills).
Comprehensive school-based sexuality education that is appropriate to students’ age, developmental level, and cultural background should be an important part of the education program at every grade. A comprehensive sexuality education program will respect the diversity of values and beliefs represented in the community and will complement and augment the sexuality education children receive from their families, religious and community groups, and health care professionals.
SIECUS’s Guidelines for Comprehensive Sexuality Education: Kindergarten–Twelfth Grade provide an organizational framework for the knowledge of human sexuality and family living within four development levels. The Guidelines are organized into six key concepts that represent the most general knowledge and encompass the components of the broad definition of sexuality. These six key concepts are human development, relationships, personal skills, sexual behavior, sexual health, and society and culture. Each key concept has associated life behaviors, topics, subconcepts, and age-appropriate developmental messages.
The primary goal of sexuality education is the promotion of sexual health. In 1975 the World Health Organization defined sexual health as “the integration of the physical, emotional, intellectual, and social aspects of sexual being in ways that are positively enriching, and that enhance personality, communication, and love…. Every person has aright to receive sexual information and to consider accepting sexual relationships for pleasure as well as for procreation.”
There is public and professional consensus about what is sexually unhealthy for teenagers. Professionals, politicians, and parents across the political spectrum share a deep concern about unplanned adolescent pregnancy; out-of-wedlock childbearing; sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS; sexual abuse; date rape; and the potential negative emotional consequences of premature sexual behaviors.
There is, however, little public, professional, or political consensus about what is sexually healthy for teenagers. The public debate about adolescent sexuality has often focused on which sexual behaviors are appropriate for adolescents and has ignored the complex dimensions of sexuality.
Becoming a sexually healthy adult is a key developmental task of adolescence. Achieving sexual health requires the integration of psychological, physical, societal, cultural, educational, economic, and spiritual factors. Sexual health encompasses sexual development and reproductive health, and such characteristics as the ability to develop and maintain meaningful interpersonal relationships; appreciate one’s own body; interact with both genders in respectful and appropriate ways; and express affection, love, and intimacy in ways consistent with one’s own values.
Adults can encourage adolescent sexual health by providing accurate information and education about sexuality, fostering responsible decision-making skills, offering young people support and guidance to explore and affirm their own values, and modeling healthy sexual attitudes and behaviors. Society can enhance adolescent sexual health by providing access to: comprehensive sexuality education; affordable, sensitive, and confidential reproductive health care services; and education and employment opportunities.
Most scholars and activists argue that adolescents should be encouraged to delay sexual behaviors until they are ready physically, cognitively, and emotionally for mature sexual relationships and their consequences. This support should include education about intimacy; sexual limit setting; resisting social, media, peer, and partner pressure; the benefits of abstinence from intercourse; and the prevention of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

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