Intended as a synthesis of current literature on school improvement and educational change, this guide attempts to provide central office personnel, principals, teachers, and parents with an overview of five school improvement models, along with practical suggestions for improving instructional programs. The second chapter summarizes relevant…

To provide administrators and teachers with a set of essential elements and principles to consider in using inservice programs for school improvement, this document presents a model comprised of 27 dimensions identified as important elements of effective inservice programs. These dimensions were identified through a review of the research…

This digest, based on a full report of the same title, provides an examination of the improvement of college teaching and argues for the central involvement of faculty themselves in collaborative peer review and looks at some central issues and challenges to implementation. Since summative evaluation involved in tenure and promotion decisions…

This report argues for the central involvement of faculty themselves in collaborative peer review for the improvement of college teaching. An early section makes the case for formative evaluation to improve teaching and argues that collaborative peer review is well suited to the formative evaluation task. The next section examines faculty roles in…

This "ERIC Digest" considers the U.S. charter-school movement, which has produced about 800 schools in half the states and enrolls over 100,000 students. Charter schools reflect founders' varied philosophies and commit to achieve certain educational outcomes within a certain period, in exchange for waiving many restrictive regulations.…

Included in this summary analysis of three journal articles and two documents on teacher evaluation are reports that touch on difficulties facing school officials in developing a teacher evaluation system and suggestions for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of an evaluation system. The first article, by Susan S. Stodolsky, challenges…

In 1991, the U.S. Congress commissioned the Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement to investigate the various aspects of education reform. This digest summarizes the findings of a resulting study that focused on the effects of school reform on students at risk. The digest identifies the components of effective…

This book presents case-study findings of five school systems' efforts to become true learning communities through action research into the school-renewal process. The programs were located in the Southeast, Midwest, Far West, and an overseas region of the Department of Defense Dependents Schools. The programs shared three characteristics: a focus…

The 11 essays in this volume discuss integrating technology into the community college campus, review implementation strategies, and describe the possibilities of institutional transformation. The following articles are provided: (1) "Technology as a Catalyst for Reinventing an Institution" (Kathryn J. Neff); (2) "Navigating the…

The need for faculty development, approaches to faculty development, and 16 postulates for a successful faculty development program are examined, based on a survey of literature of the 1970s. Among the reasons faculty development is needed are the following: decreased faculty mobility caused by declining university enrollments, financial problems…

This monograph highlights important findings and guidelines that have emerged from over a decade of research at the University of Oregon's Center for Educational Policy and Management (CEPM) concerning the continued professional development of school personnel. After a brief introduction, the booklet is divided into three sections. The first,…

Peakview is a new school that is implementing a number of organizational and teaching strategies advocated by the school restructuring reform movement. Among those strategies is the infusion of more than 80 networked microcomputers and related technology and software. This evaluation study examined the impact of the technology on the school…

Designed to assist program planners and administrators at community colleges in initiating a Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) program or determining the future direction of one already in existence, this sourcebook provides 15 articles on various aspects of WAC theory and practice. The following articles are included: (1) "History of WAC and…

This document examines what has happened to career education since the 1981 repeal of the Career Education Incentive Act and where it appears to be going in the future. In his monograph "Trends in Career Education: Implications for the Future," Kenneth B. Hoyt examines past, present, and future trends in the field from the perspective of…