Assess student knowledge of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) for Reading and Mathematics with two full-length Assessments for each subject. Questions provide students with the necessary practice needed to achieve academic success on STAAR. Chapters on test-taking strategies and test anxiety build students’ confidence and test-taking skills. Glossaries familiarize students with vocabulary terms and concepts found on state proficiency tests. Answers are provided in the Parent/Teacher Edition only.

Kindergarten has changed. Many believe that it no longer reflects a nurturing environment but, instead, has become a race for children to learn skills so they are ready for the academic achievement tests that they will take continuously throughout their time in school. Resisting the Kinder-Race examines how the race came about, why it must change, and how all stakeholders in the early childhood and elementary school communities must take part in the reform process. The author draws on his own research to consider how the Kinder-Race might be reimagined through more democratic principles of schooling. Brown offers both practical and political strategies that can alter the day-to-day practices of the kindergarten classroom and the policies that currently define PreK–12 education in the United States. This resource will help readers see kindergarten as an educational environment that expands the learning of every child. Book Features: Provides an in-depth glimpse into a typical day in the Kinder-Race.Examines how kindergarten devolved from a garden that nurtures children into a race that dashes them from skill to skill.Brings together what are often siloed conversations among stakeholder groups.Highlights how kindergarten is now primarily defined through an economic lens and how this framing of learning, earning, and consuming might be rethought. Employs varied conceptual frameworks to investigate how stakeholders across different levels of public education make sense of the changed kindergarten.Illuminates the complexity of what is occurring in today’s kindergarten and puts forward practical and achievable ideas for change.

This hearing focused on the subject of teacher recruitment and preparation. The hearing began with opening statements by several Congressmen (the Honorable Frank Riggs, Matthew Martinez, William Gooding, George Miller, and Robert Scott). Following the opening statements were statements by the Honorable Eugene Hickock, Secretary of Education, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania; Mr. E.D. Hirsh, Jr., President, Core Knowledge Foundation, Charlottesville, VA; Dr. Eric Hanushek, Director, W. Allen Wallis Institute of Political Economy, University of Rochester, NY; Dr. Richard Ingersoll, Professor of Sociology, University of Georgia, Athens; Ms. C. Emily Feistritzer, President, National Center for Educational Information, Washington, DC; Dr. Dale Ballou, Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts, MA; Ms. Kati Haycock, President, the Education Trust, Inc., Washington, DC.; Mr. Paul F. Steidler, Director, Alexis de Toqueville Institution, Arlington, VA; and Mr. Barnett Berry, Associate Director for Policy and State Relations, National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, Columbia, SC. Statements and written testimony are appended. The appendixes also include two reports by the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future: (1) "What Matters Most: Teaching for America's Future"; and (2) "Doing What Matters Most: Investing in Quality Teaching." (SM)

When Laura Bush moved into the White House on January 20, 2001, everyone wanted to know what kind of first lady she would be. Would she be like Mamie Eisenhower? Would she follow in Barbara Bush’s footsteps? Would she be another Hillary Clinton? “I think I’ll just be Laura Bush,” she would say. On Saturday, April 30, 2005, the world got a glimpse of what that meant when she pushed aside the leader of the free world and stole the show at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. Wearing a shimmering lime green Oscar de la Renta gown, Laura wisecracked that she was a “desperate housewife” married to a president who was always asleep at nine. Replayed constantly on the air, the stand-up routine with its impeccable comedic timing turned the first lady into a glittering star. But while the performance catapulted her to new status, it did not answer the question of who this former teacher and librarian really is and just what role she plays in influencing her husband and shaping his administration. The Bushes are more effective than the FBI or CIA at keeping secret what goes on behind the scenes at the White House, the ranch, or Camp David. Now, New York Times bestselling author Ronald Kessler draws back that curtain in the first biography of Laura Bush to be written with White House cooperation. Based on interviews with her closest friends and confidantes from childhood to the present, as well as family members and administration heavyweights like Condoleezza Rice and Andrew Card, Kessler paints a portrait of a woman who, even as she ascended to the heights of political fortune and power, never lost touch with the bedrock American values she absorbed in her youth. In this unprecedented account, Kessler reveals: How Laura’s opinions have brought budget changes to a range of federal agencies and have affected her husband’s policies, appointments, and worldview. Why Laura told her press secretary in May 2001 she did not want to do any more media interviews. What President Bush said to Laura at the dinner table after giving the “go” for the invasion of Iraq, and what his father, former President George H. W. Bush, wrote him the next day about the war. What Laura’s own political opinions are and what her relationship with twin daughters Jenna and Barbara is really like. What Laura says in private about Hillary Clinton, media attacks on her husband, and his victory in the 2004 election. And why Laura, at the age of seventeen, missed a stop sign and caused a fatal accident that tragically left one of her best friends dead. LAURA BUSH offers a remarkable look at the private world of this famously reserved woman, as well as the beliefs and attitudes that shape it. The book will surprise readers whose knowledge of the first lady comes from cautious media interviews and speeches. Laura Bush’s approval rating stands at 85 percent. Since opinion polls first began asking about them, no first lady has received a higher rating. This moving biography is the first to penetrate the secret world of the president’s stealth counselor who is one of our most admired public figures.