The literacy improvement efforts of New York City's Community School District #2 serve as the locus of a study into the relationship between educational policy and practice. Based on 100 observations of classroom literacy instruction, a review of documentation related to the district's Balanced Literacy Program, and interviews with teachers, staff developers, and district leaders the investigators found strong parallels between how the district children learn to read and district teachers learn to teach. These parallels are due in part to the ways in which District #2's professional development system is anchored in the Balanced Literacy Program. They also stem from District #2 leaders’ beliefs in authentic and social forms of learning, beliefs that researchers found to have resonance with sociocultural theories of how individuals develop complex knowledge and skills. The result is a coherent system in which district policy regarding student learning is consistent with that of teacher learning.

resident, a junior otorhinolaryngology resident, and a medical student. Results:The inter-class correlation between the 5 raters was 0.7600 (95% CI: 0.6917, 0.8161) and 0.6679 (95% CI: 0.5997, 0.7312) for the Philpott-Javer and Kupferberg scoring systems respectively, suggesting substantial reliability. Intra-rater data showed substantial reliability (kappa values between 0.588 and 0.844) among all raters using both systems. There was also moderate to substantial agreement between the learners and the staff rhinologist (kappa values between 0.534 and 0.710).Conclusions: Results suggest that both the Philpott-Javer and Kupferberg staging systems have acceptable intra-rater and inter-rater reliability among learners of differing levels of clinical experience and are suitable for evaluating progress following endoscopic surgery.

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