The number of American homeless youth has skyrocketed in the twenty-first century. In 2015, for example, this number reached a record high, becoming twice as high as it was before the recession. Educators should be concerned about this problem because homelessness is more harmful to children than to adults and interferes dramatically with their…

Public Agenda's Choicework Discussion Starters support dialogue and deliberation on a wide variety of issues. They have been used in thousands of community conversations, discussion groups and classrooms and by journalists, researchers, policymakers, community leaders, and individuals looking to better understand and discuss solutions to a variety…

The manual is presented in the form of a policy grid. The grid includes a consolidated list of General Educational Development (GED) Testing Service policies regarding the GED® test and overall GED® program. The grid combines all of the policies into one unified table and supersedes any prior policy manual.

The third edition of the National Technical Assistance Center for the Education of Neglected or Delinquent Children and Youth's (NDTAC's) "Transition Toolkit" provides updated information on existing policies, practices, strategies, and resources for transition that build on field experience and research. The "Toolkit" offers…

In recent years, a number of educators have challenged the usefulness of SAT and ACT tests as indicators of college readiness, and some institutions have stopped requiring college entrance examinations altogether. The purpose of this trustee guide is to acquaint trustees with the history and use of college entrance tests and the arguments for and…

Several decades of research have suggested a meaningful relationship between time and learning, where the amount of time students spend engaged in learning is strongly associated with their level of achievement. Among schools that have expanded the day and/or year, researchers have found that such a strategy can be quite effective, especially with…

The Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) will establish technical standards and guidelines to ensure that the survey design and implementation processes of PIAAC yield high-quality and internationally comparable data. This document provides a revised version of the technical standards and guidelines originally…

Presents examples of common problems that day-care centers often unwittingly create for themselves, such as overly harsh parent policies and late penalties, which frustrate parent-center relations; poor first impressions for prospective clients; overly large or small classrooms; penny-pinching in difficult times; and nondelegation of authority.…

This manual was developed to help educators, especially in further education colleges in Britain, to develop a whole-college approach to managing disruptive behavior in students and to serve as a resource for disciplinary policy and staff development. The manual is organized in eight chapters. The first chapter explores the background to the…

To assist in the evaluation of state legislation relating to educational reform a five-step procedure for analyzing state-level policy is provided. (MD)

The article provides an overview of legal and administrative demands of special education policy at state and local levels. The legal context in which special education occurs is discussed, along with a suggested approach to analyzing existing special education policy, identifying policy needs, and developing new policies. (CL)

Test-wiseness is discussed in the newsletter of Programs for Educational Opportunity (PEO), a combined race, gender, and national origin desegregation assistance center providing technical information to eligible public schools in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin. PEO is based on the belief that specific teaching of test…

Major points emphasized in this report include: (1) School improvement planning is not appropriately and effectively addressing barriers to learning; (2) Leaders for student/learning supports must mobilize and prepare student support personnel to become an integral and effective agent in school improvement planning and decision making; and (3) The…

Barriers to learning and teaching interfere with students' ability to participate effectively and benefit fully from classroom instruction and other educational activities. For school improvement efforts to succeed in ways that truly improve student achievement and student test scores, systemic changes must be made in how schools provide learning…

Looks at the problems for policy, research, and practice that arise from not carefully differentiating among students who manifest learning difficulties in reading and writing. Reviews the need for policy and practice that addresses the full range of barriers to learning so that all students have an opportunity to succeed. Concludes with…