The School Choice Demonstration Project has published a series of reports written in the fifth and final year of its evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP). This review is of "Report #29," a five-year longitudinal growth study, which found that a sample of elementary and middle school MPCP students outperformed a…

Difficulties in paying for college and in maintaining good academic performance are two major hurdles to college graduation for low-income students. In recent years, state and federal budgets for postsecondary education have been cut significantly, limiting the options policymakers, education leaders, and communities have to improve rates of…

This report is the fourth in a series of annual reports produced by the School Choice Demonstration Project (SCDP) that provides descriptive information about the schools participating in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP). A total of 115 schools participated in the MPCP for the entire 2009-10 academic year, with 20,899 students enrolled…

The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) is the nation's oldest and largest urban school choice program, offering private-school scholarships to low-income students in the city of Milwaukee since 1990. In the early years of the program, voucher schools were not required to test their students, though many of them did so using nationally normed…

School counselors are required to implement accountability strategies in order to increase student performance and contribute to closing the achievement gap. This study investigates the beliefs and practices of school counselors who have earned national recognition for implementing comprehensive school counseling programs based on identifying…

This report contains a summary of the findings from the various topical reports that comprise the author's comprehensive longitudinal study. As a summary, it does not include extensive details regarding the study samples and scientific methodologies employed in those topical studies. The research revealed a pattern of school choice results that…

This report is the second in a series of annual reports produced by the School Choice Demonstration Project (SCDP) providing descriptive information about the schools participating in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP). Following a brief history of the MPCP, this year's report contains a set of baseline descriptive statistics about…

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB, 2001) requires that all schools demonstrate that their students meet or exceed expectations on various measures of academic performance. This means that stakeholders at every level of the school system, including school counselors, must demonstrate how their efforts lead to greater student achievement (Bemak,…

The purpose of this report is to provide an annual overview of activities funded under the "Individuals with Disabilities Education Act" ("IDEA"), Part D (National Activities to Improve Education of Children with Disabilities), subparts 2 and 3 (P.L. 108-446). "IDEA", Part D, includes programs that support…

Government and public focus on accountability for program outcomes, combined with practical and ethical constraints on experimental designs, make nonexperimental studies of social programs an increasingly common approach to producing information on program performance. In this paper, we compare the effectiveness of alternative nonexperimental…

Intended for directors of special education projects, the manual provides guidelines for program evaluation. It is explained that the manual developed out of the experiences of the staff of the Leadership Training Institute in Learning Disabilities which provided technical assistance to 43 state projects. The manual's eight major sections focus on…

The purpose of this report is to provide an annual overview of activities funded under the "Individuals with Disabilities Education Act" ("IDEA"), Part D (National Activities to Improve Education of Children with Disabilities), subparts 2 and 3 (P.L. 108-446). "IDEA", Part D, includes programs that support personnel…

This one-page guide provides a handy reference to help you understand state and federal accountability program terminology. Terms defined herein are: (1) Academic Performance Index (API); (2) Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP); (3) Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration Program (CSRD); (4) California Standards Tests (CSTs); (5) High Priority…

We discuss some of the lessons the investigators learned during the development, implementation, and dissemination phases of the National Arts and Youth Demonstration Project (NAYDP). The lessons learned are relevant to various groups involved in large-scale, multi-site, community-based intervention studies: parents, youth, researchers, project…

This publication lists the exemplary vocational education projects supported in each state during fiscal year 1977 by grants and contracts funded under Section 142(d) of Part D of the Vocational Education Amendments of 1968. The arrangement is alphabetical by state, giving the project titles, the names of grantees or contractors conducting the…