The 4th and 7th grade Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) scores for the past several years have indicated that the percentage of students meeting the new higher standards is not satisfactory, although improvement is being shown every year. There are indications, however, that while some elementary and middle/junior high schools are…

The National Dropout Prevention Center for Students with Disabilities (NDPC-SD) was assigned the task of summarizing Indicator 2--Dropout--for the analysis of the 2005-2010 State Performance Plans (SPP), which were submitted to the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) in December of 2005. The text of the indicator is as follows: Percent of…

The evaluation examined issues related to: (1) Rationale and Relevance; (2) Implementation; and (3) Success. In addition, the interim evaluation was intended to: (1) Determine whether sufficient data was being collected to inform the summative evaluation and identify opportunities for improvement to fill any potential gaps; (2) Assess whether the…

In 2007, the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (NCTAF) completed an 18-month study of the costs of teacher turnover in five school districts. The selected districts varied in size, location, and demographics enabling exploration of how these variations affected costs. Costs of recruiting, hiring, processing, and training…

One of the most effective ways to implement the research-based instructional strategies from Classroom Instruction That Works is to use them with educational technologies, such as word processing and spreadsheet applications, multimedia, data collection tools, communication software, and the Internet. This book shows you how and gives you hundreds…

This issue brief focuses on the special needs of teenage parents and their children ("teen parent families") and on how the unique set of services available through Early Head Start (EHS) programs can support them. Teen parent families face multiple risks, risks that may be substantially different from those faced by families with older parents…

In this end piece, the authors argue that while this special issue shifts debates on the digital divide to address students' capacity to use Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for productive social purposes, access to ICT remains a major challenge in countries like Uganda, in which less than 1% of the population has access to the…

UK universities are accepting increasing numbers of students whose L1 is not English on a wide range of programmes at all levels. These students require additional support and training in English, focussing on their academic disciplines. Corpora have been used in EAP since the 1980s, mainly for research, but a growing number of researchers and…

Stereotypical views of scientists portrayed in the media, and how science is currently taught in Australian schools, both contribute to many students not studying science beyond Year 10. Reports on the status of science teaching in primary schools still tend to focus on the individual teacher's lack of confidence and inadequate content knowledge,…

In many schools and districts, teacher evaluation is poorly conducted, or even disparaged or ignored altogether. This handbook advocates a new approach to teacher evaluation--a cooperative effort undertaken by a group of professionals. Evaluation can reassure teachers that they are doing good and valued jobs, give security and status to…

This report provides statistical data on enrollment and degrees granted by the 66 State University of New York (SUNY) community colleges, colleges, and universities between 1948 and 1994. The first section of the report provides headcount enrollment data for the individual institutions and institutional types as well as system-wide data. The…

Data in this report were derived from the 1991 annual reports submitted by public libraries in Texas and reflect each library's local fiscal year. The report begins with general information about the Texas State library system, including addresses of agencies and names of administrative personnel. A directory of public libraries and branches is…

The shift away from norm-referenced tests to authentic samples of child performance, such as writing and drawing samples, poses serious problems in organizing and analyzing assessments of child performance. This paper proposes a process utilizing the large-scale storage capacity of centralized mainframe computers and the flexibility and efficiency…

The effectiveness of Training for Work, which is the United Kingdom's main public program for helping long-term unemployed adults find jobs, was examined through interviews with training managers in 8 training and enterprise councils (TECs), 53 training providers, and 374 individuals who had joined Training for Work in spring/summer 1993 and left…

This document focuses on libraries seeking and hiring professionals without the traditional Masters of Library Science (M.L.S.) degree but with specialized training and education in other areas. A survey was conducted in 1994, and 95 (80%) of the 119 ARL members responded. The SPEC flyer is a two-page summary of the survey and its followup…