This study characterized perceptions of agricultural leadership programs in colleges of agriculture, food, life, human, or environmental sciences at 1,862 land-grant institutions. Objectives included describing the need for programs, studying evolution within the discipline, discussing faculty recommendations for future development, and examining…

In order to inform the Indiana State Board of Education's decision-making on Indiana's On My Way Pre-K Pilot program, researchers at the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy (CEEP) at Indiana University compiled existing data on ten states that have implemented pilot pre-Kindergarten (pre-K) programs and subsequently expanded these programs…

States in the midst of implementing evaluation reforms face a common dilemma: how to ensure that all your districts are implementing quality educator evaluation systems while still providing them with the flexibility to design systems best suited to their own unique needs. One answer is to create an equivalency process (also known as an approval…

Although a growing body of research points to the critical need to foster reading, writing, speaking, and critical thinking skills for students in order to ensure their success in college, careers, and life, these efforts have tended to focus more on developing literacy skills in the early years, often ignoring secondary students. The outcome has…

In 1998, the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) began developing what is now the Appalachian Higher Education (AHE) Network. The AHE Network, currently composed of eight centers, has the mission of increasing the college-going rate in Appalachia, the numbers of students who continue their education directly after graduating high school. This…

This paper describes procedures used to stratify and refine an original sample of 951 families with preschool children living in the Appalachia area, for a study to provide information on the target audience for Appalachia Educational Laboratory's Home-Oriented Preschool Education Program (HOPE). The procedure was to force-match the sample…

A needs sensing confirmation study was conducted to identify the Appalachia Educational Laboratory's (AEL) long term research and development program needs and provide guidelines for its seven member states' activities. The AEL Board of Directors, individuals serving in similar positions as the Board members, and a sample of non-public school…

This document contains the plans for conducting the field studies of Appalachian parents of young children which are part of the Appalachia Educational Laboratory's Home-Oriented Preschool Education Program (HOPE). HOPE is an integrated approach to education for preschool and kindergarten children being developed by AEL's Marketable Preschool…

A total of 699 Appalachian families with preschool children were surveyed to gather information on the availability and use of television, radio and telephone in their homes. The survey was designed to assess the practicality of using television as one of the components of the Marketable Preschool Education (MPE) Program, an extension of the…

This study examines the effectiveness of three levels of reading materials (second, fifth and eighth grade) and two types of illustrations (decorative and instructional) on Appalachian parents' ability to complete a prescribed set of home teaching activities. The study was used in the development of parent materials for the Appalachia Educational…

The results of five studies dealing with the social and educational characteristics of Appalachian families of young children are presented as a planning base for home-oriented education. Four of the studies assessed: (1) the educational and occupational attributes of parents, (2) the availability and usage patterns of television and radio by…

In the 1990s, the nation's educational focus turned to troubled schools in the nation's poorest cities. Under the leadership of Luther Williams, then Assistant Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Urban Systemic Initiative was created to improve the teaching and learning of science and mathematics. Recognizing that high-needs…

The mission of the Appalachian Rural Systemic Initiative (ARSI) was to build a long-term capacity that would improve the educational structures of the rural communities it served. The major strategy ARSI used to create improvement communities across Appalachia was to identify, embrace and educate individual teachers, who became ARSI Teacher…