Learning centers and academic support programs are often idealized entities campuses look to for student success, retention, and engagement. By untethering our thinking about program boundaries, identities, and alliances and radically reforming, we can generate interest, passion, and opportunities across campus. The force of redistributing…

For many educational organizations, ensuring students have a positive experience and feel cared for by their degree program faculty is necessary for recruitment and retention, which can be especially important in challenging doctoral programs. Making information easily accessible and up-todate on the website, including the necessary forms, is a…

Developmental Education is the gateway to higher education for the thousands of students who desire to attend college but lack the prerequisite academic skills to be successful. In recent years, DE has been cast into unfavorable light by national policy organizations composed of wealthy entrepreneurs and philanthropists, and the result has. been a…

As additional states embark on the process of implementing four-year degrees at community colleges, they can learn from others' experience for help navigating the legislative, regulatory, and program approval processes. This brief uses examples from states currently offering bachelor's degrees at their community colleges to provide guidance for…

This chapter describes a model for continuous improvement that guides the work of the National Center on Scaling Up Effective Schools, or NCSU. NCSU is a research and development center funded by the Institute for Education Sciences, the research arm of the United States Department of Education. At the core of the Center's work is an innovative…

The perceived value of postsecondary education to economic competitiveness and individual success is driving innovation in higher education. Competency-based education (CBE) is the latest disruption that seeks to respond to the growing sense of national urgency to boost education attainment. The target audience generally includes those adult…

Three community colleges--El Paso Community College, Bunker Hill Community College, and Patrick Henry Community College--incorporated technology into the curriculum to support student progress in mathematics through developmental education. Each college took its own path: El Paso developed a self-accelerated emporium-style computer lab, Patrick…

From 1998 to 2008, the Dallas County Community College District (DCCCD) offered its employees a variety of options for formation, a type of reflective practice. The district encompasses 10 locations, seven of them independently accredited colleges. Formation is based primarily on Parker Palmer's model for Circles of Trust as described in "A…

Transmountain Early College High School (TMECHS) opened in August 2008, created by a partnership between the El Paso Community College (EPCC) and the El Paso Independent School District (EPISD), and supported in its conceptualization, start-up, and first few years operation by grant funding and guidance from the Texas High School Project (THSP)…

To give states the information they need to sustain hard-fought education reform policy changes effectively, Achieve conducted research on state education reforms that have been sustained successfully for over a decade or more. Funded by the GE Foundation, Achieve hopes this work will help other state leaders, wherever they may be on their road to…

This report focuses on a study of law-related education in high school social studies programs in five states--California, Georgia, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Teachers and administrators from 78 high schools were interviewed. Part 1 of the report explains law-related education and deals with respondents' reports of the status of…

This case study describes the evolution of a center of pedagogy in El Paso, Texas, to prepare teachers in and for exemplary schools, sustain dialogue among partners, pursue the center's agenda, and critique and revise the undertaking. The paper provides a historical context, examining the role of state public policy and outside grant funding and…

This report is a comprehensive statement of the vital role education service centers perform in implementing educational reform in Texas. Regional education service centers participate as service agencies in the planning, development, coordination, implementation, and evaluation of educational programs within the 20 regions of Texas. This report…

This paper offers a literature review of materials concerning inclusion of students with disabilities, and reports on the 3-year development of an inclusion program at one elementary school in Texas. The literature review is organized into sections which address legislative initiatives and law, special education programs with mainstreaming, the…

The Science and Mathematics Alliance for Recruiting and Retaining Teachers (SMARRT) is a collaborative partnership pursuing aggressive strategies to recruit high quality minority teachers to teach in high-need schools in urban school districts. This partnership is dedicated to recruiting, preparing, and retaining high quality teachers with strong…