Context: Provision of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) care in rural areas has encountered unique barriers. Purpose: To compare medical outcomes of care provided at 3 HIV specialty clinics in rural Vermont with that provided at an urban HIV specialty clinic. Methods: This was a retrospective cohort study. Findings: Over an 11-year period 363 new…

Periodic reexamination of existing professional development school forms is good practice to ascertain whether goals are being met. Such an assessment was sparked by a request from a superintendent in a 14-year-old professional development school structure at a public college in the Northeast. This assessment revealed that although the…

This study examined the design, implementation, and instructional effectiveness of three of America's most widely disseminated comprehensive school reform programs (the Accelerated Schools Project, America's Choice, and Successful for All) over a four year period that encompassed the school years 2000-2001 through 2003-2004. The authors' goal in…

The purpose of this document is to describe the US ED growth model pilot program from its inception to the point at which the program was no longer a pilot and was opened up to all states. In addition, the paper is designed to help states in the process of planning to submit a growth model proposal. The information in this document is mostly…

This article presents a model demonstration project that was designed to promote disability awareness, understanding, and responsiveness among University faculty and staff at a large private University. One of the unique features of the Productive Learning u Strategies (PLuS) project is that the effort targeted all faculty and staff through a…

The effectiveness of a behavioral skills training package that consisted of modeling, rehearsal, and feedback was evaluated to increase correct implementation of guided compliance by caregivers of 3 children who exhibited noncompliance. Results showed that the training package improved performance of guided compliance. Generalization probes…

Background: Despite effective solutions to reduce teen birth rates, Texas teen birth rates are among the highest in the nation. School districts can impact youth sexual behavior through implementation of evidence-based programs (EBPs); however, teen pregnancy prevention is a complex and controversial issue for school districts. Subsequently, very…

The theoretical framework for the present study encompassed the four pillars of the Performance Based Diploma System (PBDS) program: small learning communities, educational technology, flexible scheduling, and mentoring. This mixed-methods study uses appropriate portions of the Context-Input-Process-Product program evaluation model to assess…

The purpose of this study was to test the efficacy of learning communities for underprepared first-year students. The topic was examined by synthesizing data collected on a cohort of first-year college students participating in a "developmental" (special admittance) program. A quasi-experimental design evaluated the effectiveness of…

The 2007-2008 Positive Behavior Support (PBS) report provides a progress summary of PBS at AISD for the previous 4 years and summarizes the current district efforts to bring PBS to full-scale implementation.

Interdisciplinary approaches do not merely satisfy an abstract longing; in post-educational life--especially in a secular, Western, post-modern culture--young people must confront complex issues that transcend any one discipline. Educational systems accordingly have a duty to offer frameworks for understanding this complexity that go beyond any…

The growth in the availability of longitudinal data--data collected over time on the same individuals--as part of program evaluations has opened up exciting possibilities for evaluators to ask more nuanced questions about how individuals' outcomes change over time. However, in order to leverage longitudinal data to glean these important insights,…

Committed to being a charter school with a professional learning community that empowers teachers, New Mexico's South Valley Academy (SVA) staff transformed its state evaluation process into a practitioner action research process (Anderson, Herr, & Nihlen, 2007). While teachers self-diagnose growth needs and play active roles in improving…

The psychometric properties of the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale-Second Edition (RCMAS-2) were examined in a sample of 1,003 U.S. elementary and secondary students in Grades 2 to 12. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) were performed comparing the five-factor (target) model consisting of three anxiety (Physiological Anxiety, Social…

Background: Critical thinking is one of the very highest orders of cognitive abilities and a key competency in higher education. Asking questions is an important component of rich learning experiences, structurally embedded in the operations of critical thinking. Our clear sense is that critical thinking and, within that, critical questioning, is…