Education Commons^™

Editor's Note, Padraig O'Malley

New England Journal of Public Policy

On December 3, 2013, when the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released its Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores, the ranking of the United States as number 27 on the global scoreboard elicited little surprise among teachers, educational professionals, academics, and educational policymakers. The usual platitudes were trotted out—no mention that the United States’ standing was getting any worse, just which other countries were passing us by. We were stuck at a perennial average.

The results are in a sense a metaphor of the slow decline of the United State since the 1970s from a position of …

Our Grades Were Broken: Overcoming Barriers And Challenges To Implementing Standards-Based Grading, Randal Peters, Tom Buckmiller

Journal of Educational Leadership in Action

The purpose of this study was to describe the barriers and challenges school leaders face as they implement a standards-based grading (SBG) system. The researchers used a multiple case study methodology to investigate how key school leaders described their implementation journey at three schools that differed in size, demographics, and location. Purposeful sampling was used to identify key administrators at three different schools who were in the process of implementing a SBG system. Data were collected primarily via semi-structured interviews. In the analysis, researchers used three phases: horizontalization, thematizing, and textural-structural synthesis. Each of the three schools had very different …