Collaboration is tough even in ideal circumstances. How do you begin to effect change when nearly half of the families in a district speak a language other than English in the home, but traditional education models rarely emphasize the strengths of cultural or linguistic diversity? Or when nearly all students live in low-income families and face…

The human brain develops rapidly in the first five years of life. High-quality early learning experiences can have a profound and lasting positive effect on young children during these years, setting the stage for success in kindergarten and beyond. This is especially true for young children with high needs who are from low-income families; who…

In an era of prolific funding for varied small-school models, there is a growing emphasis on schools that alter the landscape of educational design. Some of these models attempt to redesign schools to place students at the center of learning and provide powerful examples of very different ways of thinking about teaching and learning (some examples…

"Information Works" offers snapshots of Rhode Island schools that make it possible to gauge a school's accomplishments against its challenges. Two pages of information for each of the state's schools present fundamental, pertinent, and uniformly reportable data about achievement. The following 10 fields are completed for each school in…

With the passage of Article 31, Rhode Island set out to transform the state's education system. This report is the first annual analysis of the work catalyzed by Article 31. Section 1 briefly outlines the events leading to this historic initiative. Section 2 describes the 1996-97 student assessment results, which are the baseline against which…

From June 1973 to June 1975 the development and implementation of a Model K-14 career education program was attempted in the North Kingstown Schools in Rhode Island. Project objectives included the development of career and self-awareness, provisions for exploratory and work experiences, provisions for job placement at graduation, and provisions…

This narrative chronicles the continued evolution and development of the Rhode Island Early Childhood Summer Institute, an intensive 5-day inservice professional development program designed for educational leaders from various sectors of the early care and education field. The goal is to review the continued use of successful practices…