Today's schools, with their increasingly diverse student populations and ever-higher achievement standards, need to use all of their resources in ways that create the maximum positive impact for students and student learning. A school's counseling program is one of these resources, and this book provides a roadmap principals and counselors can…

The professional learning community (PLC) model for enacting school improvement through ameliorated educator leadership efficacy and instructional proficiencies has become one of the most popular methods for encouraging higher student achievement in public schools across the State of Missouri. By reviewing the current educational research on the…

Response to Intervention (RTI) has emerged as a method for providing early academic assistance to students with difficulty learning. This brief outlines the tiered structure of RTI and how it can be implemented as an effective technique for teaching English learners who are having difficulty making academic progress. It touches on methods of…

Charter schools emerged in the early 1990s as a strategy for improving student learning and increasing quality educational options, often for underserved students and communities. The charter school idea centers on the promise of increased autonomy for accountability for results. Thus, the charter movement has helped to lead the charge--and has…

By offering information, counseling, and tutoring, college outreach programs attempt to smooth the path between high school and higher education for at-risk students. But do these program work? This paper uses longitudinal data from the Education Longitudinal Study to construct two quasi-experiments to assess the effectiveness of college outreach.…

This article features Campus Kids, a mentoring program located at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. Gonzaga is a Jesuit University with a strong commitment to social justice and humanistic education. Campus Kids began, in the true sense of a community partnership, as an attempt to connect community resources (potential university…

This article examines the contribution of the Education for All-Fast Track Initiative (EFA-FTI) global partnership in strengthening aid effectiveness in the education sector, and specifically how the implementation modalities of the EFA-FTI Catalytic Fund (CF) have contributed to this strengthening. The empirical findings are based on a review…

Collaborative efforts between school districts and higher education institutions to address access, retention, and achievement issues for underrepresented students have grown in recent years. Yet many of these university or school district-led efforts possess limited understanding of the community context for systemic change, and engage community…

Bringing together leading experts, this book presents the principles of effective literacy leadership and describes proven methods for improving instruction, assessment, and schoolwide professional development. The book shows how all school staff--including reading specialists and coaches, administrators, teachers, and special educators--can play…

This study explored the instructional reading practices of four elementary teachers, all graduates of a small branch campus of a large Midwestern University, who obtained their Bachelor of Arts in Elementary Education and have been employed in public elementary schools for nearly three years. The four individuals were former university students of…

Given the intense efforts to change federal legislation, it is surprising that relatively little research has examined how postsecondary institutions respond to organizational pressures and local contexts. These "boundary activities" determine actual practice (Birnbaum, 1991) and may be the only way to remedy the exclusion of undocumented…

The purpose of this study was to examine and better understand the social cognitive effects of digital technology on teenagers' brains and their socialization processes, as well as to learn best practices with regard to digital technology consumption. An extensive literature review was conducted on the social cognitive effects of digital…

This monograph outlines 12 best practices in workplace mentoring. It reflects findings from the New Voices National Fellowship Program, a human rights leadership development initiative funded by the Ford Foundation and administered by AED (Academy for Educational Development). It is hoped that readers will find the ideas developed here and the…

This article reviews current best practices of online learning and teaching. Considerations to the following topics are discussed: What does it take to excel in the online environment? How are multiple intelligences utilized in the online classroom? How can learning objectives be met by using best practices in online learning? How are the art of…

The Institute for Scholarship on Engineering Education (ISEE) program is one element of the NSF-sponsored Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education (CAEE). Its primary goal is to build a community of engineering education scholars who can think and work across disciplines with an ultimate aim of improving the engineering student…