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The Great School Staff and its main focus in wrote testing in California on standardized testing in schools. The first part of this article talks about all the different kinds of test there are through out elementary school and high school. It examines how schools are given a target in which their student's scores should follow under. These targets are called API growth targets. After the testing is complete the schools will receive rankings comparing similar schools and also comparing schools within in state. It states that these test are mainly important for helping parents understand how well their child is learning, and also how well are schools preparing their students. The results of this test can affect the children, teachers and schools. I

Seeing No Progress, Some schools Drop Laptops I found this article in an old edition of The New York Times, Seeing no progress, some schools drop laptops. In this article the author addresses the fact that in most schools having laptops given to children at such a young age was of no academic successes but instead has been making it a hassle for teachers to be able to teach their students properly. This article is aimed towards laptops being banned from elementary schools and high schools, due to the facts that studies have been done on the academic success that should have been brought on with these laptops were non- existent.

The article "Using Instructional Technology in Transformed Learning Environments: An Evaluation of Project CHILD," by Sarah Butzin, claims that students are able to learn more and are more motivated when they are able to use technology and implement the Computers Helping Instruction and Learning Development (CHILD) project. Butzin studied the effects of technology by comparing two schools that were both technology-rich. One school implemented project CHILD and the other school implemented a more traditional design. According to the author, the CHILD method involves a cluster of three grades that are broken into smaller groups and remain with the same teachers throughout those three grades (K-2 and 3-5.) The more traditional learning style still involved the use of technology in day to day learning, but every year the students changed teachers and only worked within their grade level. The CHILD implementation makes it so that children can learn at their own pace and switch stations that include bookwork, one on one or small group time with the teacher, working with technology, and hands-on experience. Butzin claims that this style of learning showed positive outcomes for testing scores, classroom motivation, improvement in behavior, and increased parent involvement.

written by Terry Miller just recently this past August. The first part of the article talks about how well students performed on the test and the huge improvement they are making over the years. The results of the test rose at least eight percent over this last year. California's top executive educator, California State Superintendent of Schools Jack O'Connell, visited Cleveland Elementary School in northwest Pasadena. O'Connell said, "The growth in achievement is evident among every subgroup of students. However, we must continue to pay close attention to the achievement gap that shows students of color and poverty are trailing behind their peers. He is concern for those students of the lower class and those of the African American race. O'Connell is trying to figure out a way to help this proficiency and narrow this academic chasm.

This article on the CARLA website is about where to find the results of a 1994 questionnaire that was mailed to 140 immersion schools in the U.S. to collect information about the language immersion program, language use, the big picture, developing curriculum, learning in non-school environments, and expressing cognitive operations through the language of immersion.

In You Can't Learn Much from Books You Can't Read by Richard L. Allington, the author discusses the roles of textbooks in the classroom. The textbooks that are used in grades fifth through twelfth don't match the reading levels of the students reading them. Classrooms use one textbook and go off the "one-size-fits-all" approach and now classrooms are using textbooks with a reading level two or more levels more advanced. This approached is shown by the achievements of US fourth graders shown to be the best in the US and then when they hit the misuse of textbooks, the achievements go down. The solutions to change this problem is to have multiple levels of text in the classroom, have student choice, and have individualized instruction. Student choice consists of having an assignment that can be done multiple ways so the student can pick the way they can excel and be interested in. Teaching the students different techniques to solve problems is part of the individualized instruction and seems to work very well.