The United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) program is an oral assessment designed to measure the most basic foundation skills for literacy acquisition in the early grades. EGRA's purpose is to document student performance on early grade reading skills in order to inform ministries…

This policy analysis project is designed at uncovering specific standards that can be utilized by a school district in developing and evaluating their Type II Alternative Schools to ensure high levels of student success within their programs. While there is a substantive body of research in alternative education, there are no universally accepted…

We developed equivalent, alternate forms of easyCBM[R] in reading (n=20 forms) and mathematics (n=13 forms) with different skills reflective of the National Reading Panel (NRP) and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), respectively. We then took three forms to use as screening measures in the fall, winter, and spring so educators…

In this article, we share how a professional development school (PDS) partnership between several elementary school sites within a district and an institution of higher education prepares special education teacher candidates. The following challenges are identified for PDS stakeholders: recruiting qualified special education mentor teachers,…

One serious purpose of the Program Development Committee is to share ideas about education with Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI) Branches around the world. Benefits of sharing ideas include: (1) Making connections with others who share interests, and thereby enrich and strengthen your ideas for helping children; and (2)…

Mentoring has become increasingly popular during recent years and particularly so in the provision of leadership development, including the mentoring of school principals. In New Zealand, many of these mentoring programmes are developed and funded by central government and are mostly designed to meet the needs of those in their initial years of…

An ideal time to start health promotion education is during the elementary years. However, over the last several years, many elementary schools have eliminated formal health education from their curriculum, subsequently integrating health education components into existing classroom content. The "I Feel Good!" radio broadcast is an…

Traditional parent-teacher conferences and student-led conferences are tools schools employ to convey student progress with parents. The student-led conference offers a valuable means for increasing student responsibility which allows students to take ownership in schooling, which in turn helped improve parent involvement and student motivation.…

Frequently the words "cooperation" and "collaboration" are used interchangeably; both words mean to develop relationships or to form associations by helping and supporting one another through organized teamwork and partnerships. Although both cooperation and collaboration feature working in groups to produce outcomes, the authors would like to…

With ongoing professional development and with appropriate tools, teachers are able to internalize information-process skills. Once they understand these process skills, they are able to apply them to any media content and to transform their teaching, without the need for a "cookbook" approach, reliant only on textbooks. Instead,…

Academically oriented after-school programs can be an effective way to provide extra help to students who need it. Research points to the importance of well-designed programs established to meet specific goals. The report lists and describes the elements of successful after-school programs. (Contains 4 online resources.)

The Canadian Education Association (CEA) was commissioned by Hewlett-Packard Canada to create a case study describing the development, implementation and outcomes of New Brunswick's Dedicated Notebook Research Project. The New Brunswick Department of Education designed its research project to assess impacts on teaching and learning of dedicated…

This report presents the outcomes of the analysis of Grade Level of Achievement (GLA) data at the provincial level to inform the program planning and evaluation needs of Alberta Education as well as school and central office based administrators. GLA data reported to Alberta Education is a teacher's judgment of a student's academic progress. GLA…

Higher rates of smoking initiation and continuation by female compared with male adolescents, as found in many developed countries, may call for gender-specific prevention programs. Risk factors of smoking initiation and continuation were examined prospectively (1997-2002) among 3205 Dutch elementary schoolchildren (mean age 11.64) in an…

This document is the direct result of a panel of nearly three dozen autism experts in New Jersey from the fields of education, medicine and psychology. The panel reviewed research findings and best practice models with a major emphasis on the conclusions and recommendations of the National Research Council and on documents from other states,…