Many early care and education (ECE) institutions--including Head Start, state quality rating and improvement systems (QRIS), and school district pre-K programs--use classroom quality observations in their quality improvement or monitoring processes. As many states expand their ECE programs, they grapple with questions about how best to use data…

An initiative to coordinate early learning programs across a major city in the Midwestern United States was undertaken in 2013. The opinions of teachers regarding effects on instruction and children were not included in the development and implementation of the program. This omission is important because multiple scholars have pointed to the…

This document is from a featured presentation at the 2018 annual conference of the Science Teachers Association of Texas (STAT). The public schools are a fundamental element of our democratic society, and they have been the pathway to opportunity and a better life for generations of Americans. But at present, the American public school system is…

Educational reform in the United States is perpetually evolving. Much of the recent reforms have concentrated on high-stakes testing and assessment, but a parallel effort has been emerging in the field of vocational and career education. Prompted partly by federal legislation--most recently by the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act…

Emphasizing the intersection of policy and politics, this paper uses Theda Skocpol's polity-centered approach (1992) to analyze two key moments in the history of the 21st Century Community Learning Centers (CCLC) program: (1) 1998, when the program's budget grew from $40 million to $200 million; and (2) 2003, when President Bush attempted to cut…

In late 1999, philanthropist Susie Buffett wanted to make the smartest possible investment to improve public education in her hometown of Omaha, Nebraska. She and her then-foundation president, Dan Pedersen, spoke with Superintendent John Mackiel regarding how he would choose to use private funds to enhance opportunities for Omaha's 46,000…

This publication is part of a series of reports that describes the results of the first year of a study of federally funded programs designed to introduce and spread innovative practices in public schools. Over several years, the study will examine innovative educational projects funded under four federal programs, including Title III of the…

The implementation of the Experience-Based Career Education federal program in several schools is discussed to illustrate three program adoption procedures: center-to-periphery, bilateral, and evolution. (CJ)

The Experimental Schools (ES) program is one of a series of federally funded projects designed to stimulate and study planned change within local educational agencies. This paper presents the goals and methods of the ES program and of research being conducted under its jurisdiction. It considers exclusively issues in the design and implementation…

This commentary on the demonstration programs of the Jacob K. Javits Gifted and Talented Students Education Program discusses their role in inducing educational change, their usefulness in illustrating new ideas, their broadening of the definition of the gifted student, their ability to change participating teachers' perspective, and their…

A key assumption of the Concerns Based Adoption Model (CBAM) is that change is a process, rather than an event. The Procedures for Adopting Educational Innovations Project is working to identify and verify diagnostic dimensions of CBAM, and to develop tools to measure the developmental status of users and non-users; these concepts will help change…

Reproduces chapters on the second and third of five proposed programs, which are: (1) internal NIE capability to monitor the R & D System and operating system of education, (2) the R & D system, (3) the linkage and support system, (4) capacity in the operating system and (5) field-initiated research on the processes of educational change.…

This paper has two main purposes: (1) to test the central thesis of systemic reform; and (2) to derive lessons about strengths and weaknesses of reform strategies used in policy and practice. It does this by a secondary analysis of case studies of nine Statewide Systemic Initiatives (SSIs) funded by the National Science Foundation. The case…

The information in this volume was compiled in order to provide a guide to the technology-in-education programs of the federal government. The goal of this book is to provide important information about technological resources that will assist teachers, administrators, students, parents and others in achieving the goal of the United States being…

This paper surveys the recent literature on the implementation of educational innovations and reviews and synthesizes research findings and recommendations for improving educational practices. It focuses on the implementation processes, influences, and effects that are considered to be important variables in educational change, and explores…