Home visiting is the strategy used by the Community Mothers Programme to enhance parenting skills of first-time mothers from economically disadvantaged areas in Dublin, Ireland. The home visitors are all women from the community who volunteer to visit parents in their homes once a month for 1 hour over a 12-month period. In a 1989 evaluation, 232…

This study investigated factors impinging upon the successful implementation of reform in New Jersey's special needs or Abbott districts. Surveys of 28 Abbott districts examined the extent to which districts embraced remedial measures in the Supreme Court's rulings; perceived compatibility between remedial measures embodied in the reform and prior…

The Behavioral Coaches (BC) is a comprehensive program designed to assist those students who demonstrate significant behavioral difficulties in school and are at serious risk of school failure or of dropping out of school. BC provided direct services to middle schools identified by the District as being in need of additional school support for…

This final report discusses the activities and outcomes of the Mentor/Advisor Project, a program designed to promote positive self-concept and school success for high school students at risk of or experiencing emotional and behavioral disabilities in rural Vermont. The Project involved small groups of heterogeneous students (i.e., those with and…

This volume, first in a series, contains a literature review of the college access field, as well as case studies and lessons for community leaders interested in designing or reforming college access programs. The college access field contains many well thought out programs that are widely believed to be effective in helping minority and…

A follow-up audit evaluated the program effectiveness of three Kulick Youth Opportunity pilot grants. For the 105-participant sample in the initial audit, earnings were analyzed to determine whether youths' earnings increased or decreased in the year after the initial evaluation. Separate earnings analyses were performed for calendar year 1999 for…

In the late 1990s the Texas Education Agency advocated the transformation of all counseling services into developmental guidance programs. This document describes the process undertaken and the lessons learned when evaluating a small, rural school district in north Texas in order to begin this model transformation. The purpose of the study was to…

This document discusses institutional effectiveness at Florence-Darlington Technical College (FDTC) (South Carolina) for the 2000-2001 academic year. Full and/or interim report summaries are provided for advising procedures, library resources, and for the following departments: Accounting, Automated Office, Office Systems Technology, Health Care…

This book is designed for college faculty, staff, and administrators who train and supervise teaching assistants (TAs). It presents a collection of papers with information on designing, implementing, and improving TA training programs. Section 1, "The Training and Preparation of Graduate Teaching Assistants," includes (1) "Conceptualizing and…

This study addressed assessing the efficacy and outcomes of a U.S. Department of Agriculture Nutrition Education Training (NET) project designed to increase awareness of health risk and wellness factors for grade 9 students. Although this paper reprises results from a survey of 125 ninth graders about the NET curriculum, the focus of this part of…

The Upward Bound program seeks to promote high school completion and college attendance of high school students who come from low-income families or have parents who did not complete college. Specifically, Upward Bound projects provide academic instruction, career planning, and college application services, during the regular school year and…

This guide is designed to help mentor teachers develop effective mentoring strategies, discussing how to provide direct assistance, demonstration teaching, observation, and feedback, informal contact, and role modeling. It offers monthly listings of activities designed to promote interaction between mentors and proteges that correspond to…

The evaluator was contracted to determine whether the online or face-to-face course components met course participants' needs and increased their understanding and knowledge of policy development processes, and to determine the efficiency and effectiveness of delivery strategies. In addition, the course evaluator was asked to look at the…

On the weekend of February 3-6, the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois hosted the 2005 National Conference of Black Physics Students, marking the 19th consecutive year that the Conference has provided African American physics students with the unique opportunity to meet and network with counterparts from all across…

In this issue of Forum Focus, we focus on what researchers and policy makers are doing to help governments take stock of their efforts to make sure that every young person is "Ready by 21"--ready for work, ready for college, ready for life. "Research Update" reviews efforts to establish a coherent set of youth development…