Many middle school and high school youth recognize the value of participating in organized activities outside school, yet too often they limit their involvement because of busy schedules and family lives, disinterest in existing activity choices, lack of motivation to attend organized activities or the lure of freedom or relaxation over structured…

This article discusses the technology immersion in the Minnetonka, Minn., School District. Imagine walking into a classroom where the teacher uses his finger on a giant touch screen to maneuver website data or diagram a sentence. Imagine every student in the class--even the one who hasn't spoken all semester--holding a response device to give the…

While resources are abundant for helping the mentor and the new teacher, very little has been written to guide the leaders of teacher and mentor development. This book provides an effective, proven model for developing, implementing, evaluating, and sustaining an induction and mentoring program that results in highly qualified teachers. A…

About one in four students who enter high school will not graduate. Numerous dropout-prevention programs have been implemented nationwide in the past decade to increase the high school graduation rate. This growth in programs has made it more difficult for educators to determine the effectiveness of the many alternatives. This guide is designed to…

This book provides college and university personnel administrators with information and resources for the development and expansion of wellness programs at institutions of higher education. The five contributed chapters address some of the issues involved in the development of wellness programs. In Chapter 1, "Wellness in Higher…

Research studies on class size date back to 1900. Common sense has suggested that small classes lead to greater academic achievement, but most research on the effects of class size on achievement have been inconclusive. Furthermore, the financial costs and political consequences of reducing class size have generally prohibited the adoption of…

The need for information controls for college records management programs and the elements of program organization, planning, and management are discussed. Conditions at institutions that indicate a flaw in information control are identified, along with the benefits of a sound records management program. The management of an information and…

The Early Childhood Development Program in Louisiana was established to improve the readiness of preschool-aged children, statewide. The target population included children who were eligible to enter kindergarten the following year, who were at high risk of not being sufficiently ready for the regular school program, and who had not been…

The cluster of studies that has come to be called the "effective schools research" is providing a reliable database on the basic differences between effective and noneffective schools. Researchers have identified three fundamental factors common to effective schools: (1) a belief in, and commitment to, student learning; (2) a sense of…

There are thousands of different inservice education programs. The purposes of this study were to identify the elements of effective teacher inservice education; to measure to what degree these elements actually exist in inservice education programs reported by Texas teachers; and to develop a strategy for effective teacher inservice. A modified…

This report describes a study designed to improve the interlibrary loan service offered by the I. D. Weeks Library at the University of South Dakota (USD); the study which examined both the actual time elapsed in filling interlibrary loan requests and the causes for delays. An introduction to the problem is provided; the library staffing and…

As an example of successful training in teacher coaching, this article describes a program conducted by the Santa Clara County, California, Educational Development Center. Aspects of the program discussed are its design, the selection of participants, the training process, the program's results, and the program's future. (MCG)

One mandate of the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990 is that students develop a writing portfolio. The Kentucky Department of Education and AEL, Inc., collaborated to help schools discern areas for improvement in their writing programs, then developed a needs assessment process instrument, the School Study of Writing Instruction (SSWI). This…

This special serial issue discusses a controversial article on university school-administration programs. The issue opens with an abridged edition of the article written for the "Phi Delta Kappan" which argues that what little evidence there is on educational administration graduate programs' efficacy indicates that such training is ineffectual.…

Monitoring school performance increasingly uses sophisticated analytical techniques. This document investigates whether one such method, hierarchical growth modeling, yields consistent school performance results when different metrics are used as the outcome variable. It is examined as to whether statistical and substantive inferences are altered…