The challenges of burgeoning enrollment and the high concentration of lower-income and ethnic minority students, a climate of low expectations, teacher and student mobility, and increasing drop-out rates, led to the formation of the Houston (Texas) Consortium of Urban Professional Development Centers. The consortium focuses on urban schools; it…

This guidebook provides the basic information needed for inservice training in techniques for observing gifted characteristics in children from diverse population groups including economically disadvantaged and students with limited English proficiency. The training program is based on a specific Staff Development Model (SDM) and a Research-based…

A questionnaire on use of cooperative learning was distributed to all faculty (76 respondents) in the College of Technical Careers at Southern Illinois-Carbondale (SIUC) and a sample of the membership (66 respondents) of the American Technical Education Association (ATEA). For both samples, the main use of groupwork was with laboratory…

A program implemented in a rural elementary school in Florida had the goal of increasing parental involvement of students in grades 1, 4, and 5. The majority of students in the school were black, came from single-parent homes, and were considered low-income. Prior to program implementation, a parent survey revealed that of 53 parents, 21 read to…

Community-based programming (CBP) is a cooperative process in which a community college serves as the leader and catalyst in effecting collaboration among the people, leaders and community organizations in its service area. This report discusses the changing role of the community college, the nature of CBP, and expected outcomes of the process,…

A practicum was designed to develop training that would increase teachers' understanding of an integrated curriculum and how to plan for implementation. Subjects were 23 teachers at a K-5 elementary school. Training was developed to provide a common knowledge base of an integrated curriculum, productive collaboration and planning, and…

The perspectives in these essays present an examination of the Kentucky educational reform effort, with an examination of its rationale, various facets, and the reactions to its implementation. The ambitious assessment system includes multiple-choice and open-ended items, performance tasks, and portfolio assessments. The following are included:…

This paper summarizes the results of a study of the local consequences of implementing statewide minimum competency tests. For American education to be the best in the world, the use of statewide and nationwide standardized testing as a primary policy tool for stimulating reform must be discontinued. Second, school district responses to such…

Since the mid-1980s two-way bilingual education programs have attracted renewed interest as an effective way to educate both language-minority and language-majority students. This report, which describes and assesses the current state of such programs in the United States, is based on data collected from 169 schools during the 1991-92, 1992-93,…

This report summarizes the 1990-91 State Performance Reports for the Chapter 1 (Education Consolidation and Improvement Act) local education agency (LEA) program and the Chapter 1 State Agency Neglected or Delinquent program. Chapter 1 represents the largest investment in elementary and secondary education of the Federal government. With the…

Arguing that online searching will fill the research needs of many students while helping to reinforce valuable information retrieval skills that will support students in their pursuit of life-long learning, this guide is designed to assist school librarians with integrating online searching into the school library media curriculum. Chapter 1…

Integrating a library skills curriculum requires that school library media programs be able to schedule instruction flexibly. Flexible scheduling describes a program in which the learning experiences of students are based on need rather than on routine weekly visits to the library media center for class instruction. To determine the factors that…

This book synthesizes a group process conceptual framework and a practical model for facilitating learning. The book contains a curriculum of sequenced and developmental group process activities designed to make school meaningful for every student, a description of how to become skillful with the art and science of facilitative group process, and…

This report documents the multicultural education programs funded by the New York City Board of Education in 1989-90, the second year of the program. Although a formal evaluation was not conducted, program implementation was documented through interviews and surveys of district staff. An overall summary and descriptions of program components are…

Originally designed to serve 400 employees, the Mott Community College (MCC) Workplace Literacy Project provided instruction in basic workplace skills to 566 employees from 20 companies. The cost was 2 percent lower than projected. All participants were assessed and counseled on the basis of the assessment tests. Individualized training plans were…