Some institutions' prior learning assessment (PLA) programs are far more successful than others. As with any strategic initiative, the best-intentioned policy is only as good as the implementation, operations, and people behind it. Beyond progressing through the change management process, ensuring sustainability is critical to long-term PLA…

Advanced Placement (AP), launched in 1955 by the College Board as a program to offer gifted high school students the opportunity to complete entry-level college coursework, has since expanded to encourage a broader array of students to tackle challenging content. This Education Commission of the State's Policy Analysis identifies key components of…

High-potential students from underresourced rural schools face barriers that reduce options for academic advancement, which widens the excellence gap between them and their more affluent, but similar ability peers. The goal of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of an expanded above-level testing model to identify high-potential rural…

In December of 2009, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels announced that the latest state revenue forecasts predict that the state of Indiana will spend $1.8 billion more than it receives in tax revenue collections through July 2011. Therefore, Governor Daniels announced that he will cut at least $300 million from K-12 education spending in the next…

Using an example of the model partnership program between the Sacramento City Unified School District (SCUSD) and Sacramento City College (SCC), this report offers guidance for community colleges interested in developing or expanding articulation programs with local high schools. Part 1 provides an overview of the policy issues involved in…

This publication discusses four models for technical preparation (tech prep): program organization; student progress; tech prep data collection and evaluation model; and school/community. The program organization model is divided into four sections. Section I, the business industry, and labor section, shows the flow from craft committee and…

Cooperation between colleges and schools is considered in seven chapters. Attention is directed to academic standards, accelerating students, teacher preparation, experiments in transition, minorities, and special models. The analysis is intended to illustrate the great diversity of partnership activities in progress. In an introduction by Ernest…

A project was conducted to improve articulation between secondary and postsecondary vocational programs in southwest Washington. Included among the major project activities were the following: completion of interviews with vocational staff in six cooperating districts and two community colleges; preparation of a report on the current status of…

Online high schools are growing significantly in number, popularity, and function. However, little empirical data has been published about the effectiveness of these institutions. This research examined the frequency of group work and extended essay writing among online Advanced Placement Program® (AP®) students, and how these tasks may have…

Establishing and refining a framework for performance assessment is especially difficult in large-scale settings that can involve hundreds of judges and thousands of students. This presentation advocates the interactive use of two complementary analytic perspectives and illustrates the approach in the context of the College Entrance Examination…

This is a study of high schools and their districts receiving Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) grants that have used those grants to support implementation of the Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) model. Over a 4-year period 10 such high schools in 5 districts have been examined to determine if schoolwide or district-wide…

Descriptions of school-college partnership efforts are presented, and 11 ways that schools and colleges can work together to benefit high school students are identified for school principals. The information was obtained in 1986 via the National Survey of School-College Partnerships, a copy of which is appended. Approximately 85 programs are…

In the design and implementation of the Council on Postsecondary Accreditation's (COPA) Project to Develop Evaluative Criteria and Procedures for the Accreditation of Nontraditional Education, a taxonomy for the classification and determination of the nature of nontraditional institutions has been developed. The objective of the study was to…