Rising remediation rates among college students are leading to increased time for completion of degree, additional costs for students and colleges, and financial aid being used on courses that do not count towards a degree. In response to these issues, in 2007 the state of Illinois passed the College and Career Readiness Act, Public Act 095-0694,…

For productive follow-up of meetings and seminars, an executive summary can be invaluable. Such a post-meeting synopsis enables leaders to reinforce important meeting content which can lead to greater productivity for the participants. Strategies for creating and using an executive summary include: (1) selecting a summarizer to write down and…

Although each higher education institutional research office has a unique style and mission, their commonalities suggest guidelines for establishing effective units, including placement high in the organizational structure, consistent attention given to first-order data responsibilities (collection, reporting), attention to institutional needs, a…

Christine Greenhow, J. D. Walker, Dan Donnelly, and Brad Cohen describe the implementation and evaluation of the University of Minnesota's Fair Use Analysis (FUA) tool, an interactive online application intended to educate users and foster defensible fair use practice in accordance with copyright law by guiding users through a robust,…

Intensive analysis of the policies and practices of two high-achieving schools confirms that a coordinated school-wide emphasis on reading pays off. Four references are provided. (Author/DCS)

This is the first report using the policies and procedures adopted by the Maryland Higher Education Commission on September 23, 2003. The report provides a list of academic degree programs that have been identified as low producing based on a single criterion of degree production. The programs are identified by the Maryland Higher Education…

Sink or swim has been the prevailing climate of higher education in the past. Students will either find their way through, or find their way out of institutions of higher learning. But since roughly the late 1980s and through the 1990s, on campuses across the country a profound shift seems to have taken place. Institutions increasingly understand…

Purpose: Current demands for school leaders as well as reported administrator shortages have resulted in the implementation of district-based aspiring leaders programs to promote teacher leaders into administration. Because educational administration has, traditionally, been informed by androcentric perspectives, this study was designed to…

The Exploratorium is home to XTech, a science education program which began in 2006 and was primarily funded by a three-year National Science Foundation grant (Award # 05-25217) through its ITEST (Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers) initiative. XTech provided project-based afterschool activities in science, engineering,…

Marzano (2003) identified 11 factors that positively influence student achievement. Those factors can be divided into three categories: school-level practices, teacher-level practices, and student-level characteristics. Interestingly, Marzano (2000) found that school- and teacher-level influences account for only 20% of the variance in student…

Educators at all school levels know that successful students--at all ability levels--have families who stay informed and involved in their children's education. Yet many middle level and high school teachers report that the only time they contact families is when students are in trouble. This disconnect between knowledge and behavior can be…

The Drug Infusion Project, sought to Discretionary Fund of the Secretary of Education, sought to infuse drug education into ongoing subjects at all grade levels and to promote thinking of drug education as being done at the same time, rather than in addition to, ongoing subjects. The background of the project came from the Department of Education…

The paper is a product of the 3-year project, "Functional Mainstreaming for Success," designed to develop a model for instructional mainstreaming of handicapped children (3-6 years old) in community settings. The paper reviews the literature defining "mainstreaming," notes that mainstreaming is not the wholesale return of exceptional students from…

Using retired teachers as mentors for beginning teachers in New York City has made real differences in the lives of the new teachers, their mentors, the students, and the supervisors in approximately 100 schools. In these schools more than 100 mentors have worked with 500 teachers over a three-year period. The New York City Mentor/New Teacher…

Physical education contributes to the physical, mental, and emotional health of young people. Administrators must recognize these contributions and ensure an effective program by evaluating and retraining teachers to keep abreast of the recent knowledge explosion in physical education. (CJH)