This guidebook has been developed to support and coordinate efforts across Pennsylvania to increase the connections between farms and schools. It is written for schools and school districts--and especially for food service directors, teachers, administrators, school nurses, and school health and wellness committees. It is also written for farmers…

Policy decision makers, early educators, and early interventionists face numerous challenges as they develop and implement statewide accountability systems to evaluate and improve children's early intervention and early childhood special education outcomes. Kansas was an early adopter of the Child Outcomes Summary Form (COSF) developed by the…

Historically, faith-based organizations (FBOs) and community-based organizations (CBOs) have been involved in the provision of social services, such as drug treatment, job training, community redevelopment, housing, and education. However, FBOs and CBOs have not often participated in U.S. Department of Education (the Department) grant programs. In…

This study investigated the impact of child teacher relationship training (CTRT) on teachers' ability to provide emotional support in the classroom, teachers' use of relationship-building skills, and teachers' level of stress related to the student-child relationship. Teachers and aides from one Head Start school were randomly…

This study examines the impact of the school accountability laws "No Child Left Behind" and Indiana's Public Law 221 on Superintendents' perception of their relationship with the Teachers' Union Leader in their mandatory discussion meetings. Both school accountability laws contain provisions for the Indiana's Department of Education to…

A changing classroom population and lack of English as a Second Language or bilingual instruction at the preschool level has required Head Start teachers to teach English language and literacy skills to English Language Learners (ELLs). The purpose of this dissertation was to develop and validate a new scale to measure preschool teachers'…

School accountability is subject to considerable scrutiny. It generates sharp political debate, policy challenges, and continuous discussion. Growth models are now a part of that discussion. To many practitioners the sheer volume of "important to know" information is daunting. The members of the Technical Issues in Large Scale Assessment…

Researchers investigated whether the Classroom Assessment Scoring System[TM] reliably characterized prekindergarten classrooms having varying ethnic and language compositions across the instrument's three domains (Emotional Support, Classroom Organization, and Instructional Support). They also examined whether the instrument predicted children's…

This exploratory study investigated how 2 years of a coaching-based language and literacy intervention were linked to Head Start teachers' classroom environments and instructional interactions, as well as to the vocabulary, alphabet, and sound awareness learning of their preschool students. In total, 16 Head Start teachers participated in the…

Applying a Multiple Streams framework, the article documents the development and ultimate undoing of what became known as the national sales tax plan for education. The authors identify four factors that coalesced to lead the Nixon administration to propose replacing local property taxes with a federal value-added tax to finance K-12 education.…

Before awarding waivers from core tenets of the No Child Left Behind Act to 11 states, the U.S. Department of Education ordered changes to address a significant weakness in most states' proposals: how they would hold schools accountable for groups of students deemed academically at risk, particularly those in special education or learning English.…

Recently, much attention has focused on the number of schools in the nation failing to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) in raising student achievement under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). The Obama Administration has projected a dramatic increase in this number as 2014--the year when 100% of students are expected to score proficient on…

Increasing federal intervention and the resulting burden of complying with federal programs, rules, and regulations has caused a significant growth in state bureaucracy, much of which has a parasitic relationship with federal education programs, straining the time and resources of local schools. Instead of responding first to students, parents,…

This quantitative survey-design research study examined elementary school principals' perceptions regarding the effect of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). A primary focus of the study was to determine how elementary school principals feel about the influence of NCLB on their role as instructional leader. A sample of 133 elementary school principals…

The "No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB)" is designed to achieve an ambitious goal: All children will be proficient in reading and mathematics by the 2013-14 school year. A key strategy for achieving this goal is accountability. Based on findings from two federally funded studies--the Study of State Implementation of Accountability…