Community colleges continue to operate in a society of accountability and efficiencies. Throughout the country, states have implemented performance-based funding and completion agendas while also tightening or restricting funding for higher education. The state of Ohio has implemented one of the boldest performance funding plans in the country…

With very few exceptions colleges and universities of all types--2-year and 4-year, public and private-- are feeling the fiscal pinch. They are caught in the vise of rising expectations and constrained revenues. Public institutions are operating in an environment in which state-level policy-makers press for increasing numbers of graduates,…

We take an innovative approach to estimating student mathematics learning in the sixth grade of three African countries. The study reinforces the notion that beyond the quality of the teaching process in classrooms, national contextual factors are important in understanding the contribution that schooling makes to student performance. Our approach…

Since the 2008 implementation of Response to Intervention (RtI) plans in Illinois, rural schools in southern Illinois with a high percentage of low-income students have been compelled to implement school-wide reforms of their reading programs. Often, limited funding makes it difficult to sustain growth trends in Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).…

This Research & Policy Brief addresses the aspect of the teacher support system that is perhaps the most important and often the most weakly implemented: teacher learning and development. This brief includes the following to help state and district leaders select professional learning activities that are worth the allocation of scarce resources:…

The desire to provide high quality instruction to an increasing number of students while maintaining or reducing costs has led to the development of mediated instructional modules. A model is described, which is used to predict the costs of using various alternative media to achieve the same instructional objectives for the same student population…

It is argued that studies of "school effects" must make a clear conceptual distinction between school and schooling as very different results may be obtained by research that does and does not maintain these conceptual and corresponding operational definitions. (Author/DB)

Presents an overview of Gaelic immersion programs in operation in Scotland and of the models in which they are deployed. The article highlights the teaching methods used and outlines the views and experiences of classroom teachers and the parent body. Findings reveal that the teachers want more resources and the parents are highly supportive.…

Response to Intervention (RtI) is the practice of providing high-quality instruction and interventions to meet student needs and monitor progress in order to ensure effectiveness of instruction and/or interventions. RtI is an integrated service delivery approach for all students and should be applied to decisions in general, remedial, and special…

At a time when college degrees are increasingly a prerequisite for middle-class wages, less than 40 percent of college students are able to demonstrate proficiency on literacy tests, barely half of college students graduate on time, and many do not graduate at all. At the same time. the price of college continues to increase quickly and…