As part of its contract to develop a framework for continuous school improvement in its four-state region (Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia), Appalachia Educational Laboratory staff designed the Quest project. Based upon principles of inquiry, collaboration, and action research, Quest supports and investigates ongoing school…

This paper provides an update on how some new charter schools have fared during the first year of operation under Pennsylvania's charter school legislation (PA Act 22, June 1997). Data should facilitate an examination of the degree to which the legislation supports or inhibits the entrepreneurial school reform practice of charter schools. Twenty…

This study evaluated Sister Friend, a mentoring program in Yolo County, California, serving low-income adolescent mothers and their infants. The primary objective was to determine if participating in the Sister Friend program improved the adolescent mother's parenting class attendance, the home environment, parenting behavior, and child…

This report presents the results of a survey of the 1998 graduates of Westchester Community College. The 464 graduates responding to the survey have fared quite well since graduating. The mean salary of those employed full-time is $29,755. Two-thirds reported being employed, which is slightly less than last year's graduating class. Of those…

The professional development of teachers is a crucial element of the nation's efforts to improve education. In recent years, these efforts have sought to foster high standards for teaching and learning for all of the nation's children, and almost all states have met federal requirements for developing challenging statewide content standards. Such…

In response to a request from the Child Care Bureau of the Administration for Children and Families, the Board on Children, Youth, and Families convened two workshops in 1999-2000 to review current and emerging efforts to establish performance measures for early childhood programs. At each workshop, experts in child development, child care, early…

This report presents the findings of an evaluation of the operation of the Higher Education Summer Schools scheme in England, part of the Excellence in Cities initiative focusing on year 11 and 12 students. Data come from a study of the operation of the scheme in a selected sample of 16 higher education institutions through interviews of personnel…

This study measured current trends in distance education in the United States within Library and Information Science programs. The study was conducted, for the period 1989 to 1998, through a content analysis of journal articles from the "Library Literature" database, and through a content analysis of graduate catalogs from American Library…

As policymakers have sought to balance the goal of fostering poor children's well-being with that of encouraging adult's self-sufficiency, public assistance has become more predicated on custodial parents' involvement in work or mandatory welfare-to-work programs activities. This report examines the effects of welfare-to-work programs on the…

This report describes the second-year results for an evaluation of the School Choice Scholarships Foundation (SCSF) program to award 1,300 scholarships so that children of low-income families in grades 1 through 4 in New York City public schools could transfer to private schools. Because the scholarships were awarded through a lottery, the…

This project was part of the program evaluation of the Iowa Distance Education Alliance, a Star Schools Project funded by the U.S. Department of Education. Thirty Iowa high schools were selected to represent the state. Interviews were conducted with students, faculty, and administration at each of these schools; results were transcribed and…

Block scheduling has grown rapidly in recent years. In North Carolina, 77 schools started block scheduling in 1995-96, bringing the total number of blocked schools in the state to 207. A previous evaluation compared 1995 End-of-Course (EOC) Test scores for block-scheduled (blocked) and nonblocked schools. This report presents results of the…

This guide, in workbook form, offers an assessment model for service learning programs that focuses on the four constituencies of service learning: students, faculty, community, and the institution. The approaches described were evaluated and refined in a pilot study with 10 service learning courses. The model provides both quantitative and…

Project TEAM--Teacher Education for the Approaching Millennium--represents an educational partnership designed to improve science teacher preparation, content knowledge among both students and teachers, and the desire to better connect the theoretical constructs offered in a science methods course with the practical concerns expressed by students…

There is a fair amount of research on individual curricular experiments in specific high school courses, but general research on high school curriculum and what the curriculum should be is hard to find and is far out weighed by theory and policy. Most of the theory and policy literature are dominated by discussions of state and national standards.…