Our society has a great need for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) professionals and educational institutions are currently having difficulty keeping up with society's demand (Carnevale, 2011). Outreach efforts are a key strategy to encouraging young people to pursue STEM careers and evaluation methods need to be used to…

Since the beginning of the Positive Behavior Interventions and Support (PBIS) program in the Study School District there has not been an evaluation of its effectiveness in reducing student discipline referrals and student suspensions and its success in promoting a positive learning environment leading to improved academic achievement. This study…

Differential response (DR), also referred to as alternative response (AR), family assessment response (FAR), or multiple track response, was developed to incorporate family-centered, strengths-based practices into child protective services (CPS), primarily by diverting lower risk families into an assessment track rather than requiring the…

To explore the potential applications of synchronous technology to enrich student learning, faculty members from an American regional state university and a Chinese regional university collaborated to find appropriate ways to integrate synchronous technology (e.g., Adobe Connect) into an educational technology program in the American university…

The United Nations (UN) proclaimed the years 2005 to 2014 the World Decade on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). As a follow up on the World Decade, the UN launched a Global Action Programme (GAP) that is designed to set the framework for international activities on ESD. The GAP focuses on five priority areas that are of high relevance…

This article is focused on identifying the current issues in elementary education in the United States. In each of these issues, elementary educators are at the crossroads looking for solutions and directions. Based on the review of literature, the authors pinpoint the upcoming challenges elementary school educators will be facing in the future.…

Success for All (SFA), one of the best-known school reform models, aims to improve the reading skills of all children but is especially directed at schools that serve large numbers of students from low-income families. First implemented in 1987, SFA combines a challenging reading program, whole-school reform elements, and an emphasis on continuous…

Success for All (SFA), one of the best-known school reform models, aims to improve the reading skills of all children but is especially directed at schools that serve large numbers of students from low-income families. First implemented in 1987, SFA combines a challenging reading program, whole-school reform elements, and an emphasis on continuous…

Five knowledge-for-action theories are summarized and compared in this chapter for their evaluation implications: knowledge utilization, diffusion, implementation, transfer, and translation. Usually dispersed across multiple fields and disciplines, these theories are gathered here for a common focus on knowledge and change. Knowledge in some form…

This study evaluated the effectiveness of high school tutors' implementation of "Great Leaps Reading" (Campbell, 1998), a reading fluency supplementary instructional program. The program consists of three sections: phonics, sight word phrases, and story passages. Daily 15-minute tutoring sessions involved repeated 1-minute timings of…

Out-of-wedlock pregnancy among adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa is a major concern, because of its association with health, social, psychological, economic and demographic factors. This article describes the development of the Teenage Mothers Project, a community-based intervention to improve psychological and social well-being of unmarried…

The concept of "implementation fidelity" is broadly used to capture the extent to which an intervention is executed as intended by the designers of the intervention (Century, Rudnick, & Freeman, 2010; Huntley, 2005, McNaught, Tarr, & Sears, 2010, Munter, 2010). Though implementation fidelity instruments are often used to assess…

California allocates $550 million to expanded learning through After School Education and Safety (ASES) state grants, and $140 million of federal money in 21st Century Community Learning Center grants each year; more than all other states combined. Much variability exists in program quality, and research has identified mixed results as to the…

During the 2013-2014 school year, Austin Independent School District served more than 23,000 English language learner students in bilingual or English as a second language programs. This report summarizes these students' English language proficiency gains as well as academic performance on the state's required assessments during that school year.

Project Linking Learning ("Link") was created to target the needs of gifted students in urban school districts with historically underserved populations. Project Linking Learning implemented a linking curriculum between in-class instruction and an afterschool enrichment program for selected students in second through fifth grade.…