Chaffey College, a three campus college with approximately 20,000 students located California's Inland Empire, has become the destination of many community college practitioners from around the country. The reason why? Over the past ten years, the college has become nationally-known as an institution with a "risk tolerant change-oriented…

To meet the more rigorous expectations embodied in new college- and career-ready standards, students will need teachers who teach in ways that are distinctly different than how most have been teaching. Students will need, for example, English and science teachers who give students more guided practice in reading nonfiction texts that are more…

Great leaders make great schools. The most successful school leaders create a school climate of high achievement and continuous improvement, give teachers a voice in decision-making, use data to drive curriculum and instruction, and assure students and parents that everyone at the school is focusing on student success. They know what is going on…

This monograph offers an in-depth look at the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Rural Systemic Initiative (RSI) efforts, an investment of more than $140 million to reform mathematics and science programs in rural K-12 public education and tribal education. The authors seek to promote a foundation of contextual understanding for improving public…

In 2006, six community and technical colleges in Washington State joined the innovative national reform initiative called Achieving the Dream (ATD). This report describes the progress each college made in implementing ATD's "culture of evidence" principles for institutional improvement, examines strategies implemented by the colleges to…

This qualitative study identified the best practices utilized by community colleges to achieve systemic and cultural agreement in support of the integration of institutional effectiveness measures (key performance indicators) to inform decision making. In addition, the study identifies the relevant motives, organizational structure, and processes…

Across the United States, student achievement is a concern. The local district under study is not meeting adequate yearly progress (AYP), a standard initiated by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which schools are expected to attain to avoid sanctions. The district's students are performing lower than state average on the state's standardized…

The National Center on Scaling up Effective Schools (NCSU) is a five-year project working to develop, implement, and test new processes to scale up effective practices in high schools that districts will be able to apply within the context of their own unique goals and circumstances. This report describes the activities and findings of the first…

Transforming Writing is a two-year action research project which aims to develop a model for the teaching and learning of writing that more fully incorporates a focus on embedded formative assessment. In the first year of the project, the 12 participating schools developed a model of writing underpinned by Talk for Writing, an approach developed…

In the present study, an examination is conducted in three school districts of how data are used to improve classroom practice. In doing so, we explore the effects that attitudes toward data, principal leadership, and computer data systems have on how data are used to affect classroom practice. Findings indicate that educators are ambivalent about…

Recommendations to increase the relevance of information, improve the communication of information, and increase user responsiveness to information are presented. Recommendations include the following: (1) the Department of Education (ED) should institute a flexible planning system for evaluations of federal education programs; (2) congressional…

OVER A PERIOD OF 2 YEARS, A DRAMATIC TRANSFORMATION HAS OCCURRED IN THE LEARNING CLIMATE OF THE SCHOOL. THE TENSION AND HOSTILITY, PRESENT IN MANY OF THE CLASSES OBSERVED IN 1961, HAVE LARGELY DISAPPEARED. WITH A MINIMUM OF STRUCTURAL CHANGES, THE PHYSICAL FACILITIES HAVE BEEN GREATLY IMPROVED. BRIGHT COLORS, LARGE BULLETIN BOARDS, AND DISPLAYS OF…

The Linguistic Bibliography is a general-purpose tool which provides a comprehensive listing of references to archival documents in linguistics and related fields, with a retrospective coverage of almost thirty years. The measures of the Linguistic Bibliography Project, which were implemented during 1963-1966, are summarized with an amphasis on…

The Wells Fargo Gamefield Program grants can help reverse the downward trend in the health of American youth. Used from the elementary through the college levels, the program can bring fitness for life to communities. (MLF)

A new federally funded program designed to recruit and train people from the larger society to help cure the ills of city schools is described. (CK)