Describes the system used by Prince George's Community College to develop a set of criteria for an effective approach to student retention and an action agenda for the development of retention strategies. Provides six criteria (e.g., retention should be student- rather than institution-centered) and outlines the six phases of the action agenda.…

The 33 modules of a Utah district's successful Resilient Youth Curriculum pilot program provide guidelines for initially working through students' protected exteriors to establish trust and facilitate the resiliency-building process. Students then develop ownership of the program by participating in planning, shaping, and implementing the…

In 1990, George Mason University (Virginia) proposed building a combined library/student center. Examines the processes, policies, and procedures used to develop a new library collection combining multiculturalism, diversity, and core texts. Discusses the collection development plan, strategies, and policy; faculty involvement; key series and sets…

Problem-based learning is designed to maximize active student participation in the learning process, foster student problem-solving and self-education skills, enhance student self-assessment, increase student communication skills, and improve student abilities to access and use information resources. A Texas high school's innovative problem-based…

Profiles four successful charter schools. San Diego's O'Farrell Community School provides an enrichment curriculum for inner-city middle schoolers. The Minnesota New Country School, established by three teachers, stresses individual and group projects. Saint Paul's City Academy engages 60 racially diverse youngsters with real-life construction…

Provides references related to the most common learning goals mentioned in the eight general education programs described in this volume: civic education, communication, critical thinking, ethics, and international/intercultural education, along with mathematics, science, and technology. Includes a brief discussion of journals dealing with general…

Dissatisfied with their present parent-teacher conference format, an Iowa middle school perused the literature on student-led conferences and established three program implementation phases: initial preparations, conferences, and evaluations. Students selected portfolio items, decided what to discuss with parents, and rehearsed the conference…

Describes the Japan-Florida Teens Meet Project, an international program linking students at a Florida high school and a Japanese high school. Students were encouraged to e-mail their partners daily. The program also involved videoconferencing, a dollar/yen conversion exercise, and construction of space-station scale models. (MLH)

At Pajaro (California) Unified School District, it is no longer acceptable merely to demonstrate skill. Teachers must also identify the effects they have on students. Pajaro's assessment system is anchored in the California Standards for the Teaching Profession and requires self-assessment. (MLH)

Teachers deserve objective evaluations that will help them to improve. Delaware uses a four-point rubric ranging from "unsatisfactory" to "needs improvement,""effective," and "exemplary." Teachers' placement depends on frequency of demonstrated behaviors identified in each rubric. For lower ratings, the…

The Center for Family Research has implemented the first family-community preventive intervention program designed specifically for rural African American families and youths. Basic information garnered during a decade of research in rural African American communities formed the theoretical and empirical foundations for the program, which focuses…

Principles drawn from contemporary developmental-contextualism are presented as a framework for guiding the design, implementation, and evaluation of school-linked prevention programs that are consistent with an emerging body of research specifying best practices in prevention. Two school-linked preventive interventions, the Gardner Extended…

In February 2007, First 5 LA contracted with Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. (MPR) and its subcontractors, Juarez and Associates, American Institutes for Research (AIR), and Berkeley Evaluation and Assessment Research (BEAR) Center, to conduct the First 5 LA/LAUP Universal Preschool Child Outcomes Study (UPCOS). The authors conducted the study…

This article discusses the part-time/Internet-based Master of Public Health (MPH) program at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH). The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health was the first school of public health in the United States to offer a Master of Public Health program via the Internet. The JHSPH MPH Program…

In U.S. K-12 public education, incentive pay for educators remains firmly fixed as a high-interest policy topic and has recently become a popular reform initiative in many school systems. The Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF), created in 2006 by the U.S. Department of Education, is at the forefront of this policy movement and has provided hundreds of…