Educators are increasingly pressured to raise standardized test scores. Test-focused school leaders, however, may neglect school climate factors associated with positive student development and increased student achievement. The California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS) and its Resilience Youth Development Module (RYDM) represent a research-based,…

Outcome Based Education (OBE) is a holistic process for districtwide educational improvement. The Outcomes Driven Development Model (ODDM) is a means of implementing OBE that is used in 16 states and more than half of Utah school districts. A study of the impact of OBE in Utah reviewed grant applications and awards as well as state and district…

The importance of co-curricular experiences is leading to an increased scrutiny of student development functions. This ethnographic-interview study examines the effect of participation in intercollegiate athletics on students' academic success. The setting for the research was a large community college. Fourteen current and two former student…

Very little has been written in the area of the application of structured or planned groups in college settings, particularly in making a direct connection between theories of college-student development and the use of groups to facilitate and encourage that development. Information is provided in this book for all in higher education who are…

This survey is designed to be an assessment instrument for measuring a school's effectiveness in meeting the needs of at-risk and low achieving students. The survey consists of nine sections. Statements listed in each section are used to characterize specific behaviors with a scale rating for how each statement reflects the situation or attitude…

This paper describes an elementary school's attempts to give its students a "moral education." The school's program emphasized participation and discussion while stressing rules and principles of cooperation, trust, community, autonomy, and self-reliance. School personnel initiated a more democratic environment by moving the locus of…

The National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA) conducted a national survey to determine the status of local campus initiatives in student outcomes assessment. Its goal was to determine whether assessment programs have been or are being developed, the objectives and source of initiation, and assessment techniques. Of…

In order to evaluate the validity of outcomes assessment at two-year colleges, the American College Testing (ACT) Program developed "Project Cooperation." Institutions participating in the project administered tests and surveys to measure changes in students' cognitive abilities over time and record student feedback, and reported the…