Despite some cuts to the nation's oldest Federal College Access Programs, known as the TRIO programs (e.g., Upward Bound), new education policies have emphasized college and career readiness. In 2010, Congress approved the College Access Challenge Grant Program, which aims to increase the number of low-income students who are ready for college.…

With 55 percent of the 53,400 students on free and reduced lunch programs, a 78 percent mobility rate, and a diverse population, Columbus City Schools (CCS) in Ohio faces the challenges common to other urban districts. In spite of the challenges, CCS has made a long-term commitment to engage students in high-quality physical education and physical…

This 3-year project, part of an ongoing collaborative program development effort, is aimed at improvement of teacher education between Ohio State University and five Franklin County (Ohio) school districts. The project established a pilot program to help beginning teachers explore their own needs and classroom processes with the assistance of…

The Ohio State Board of Education approved new standards for colleges and universities preparing teachers, which have major implications: (1) joint governance of teacher education by universities and school districts; (2) university involvement in in-service teacher education programs; and (3) a new emphasis on field experiences in a variety of…

The Greater Cleveland Educational Development Center is a consortium comprising the College of Education at Cleveland State University, Ohio, and 35 local school districts and educational agencies in northeastern Ohio. The principal mission of the Center is to provide quality staff development programs to teachers and administrators from its…

Project RAISE (Rural America Institute for Special Educators) was a preservice teacher training program specifically designed for preparing special educators for the demands of rural settings. The project was conducted by the Department of Special Education at Bowling Green State University (Ohio) and concentrated on training special educators in…

This paper describes a Goals 2000 project intended to redesign preservice teacher education, practicing teacher roles, and student learning experiences within a Professional Development School framework. The team includes teaching faculty from the University of Akron (Ohio) College of Education Department of Curricular and Instructional Studies,…

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…