The goal of this workshop for school psychologists is to provide high quality training in best practices for instructional evaluation. An objective of these trainings is to facilitate the implementation of the instructional evaluation requirement of the Special Education Regulations and Standards for determining eligibility for special education…

This document is a study on the attendance patterns of community college transfer students prior to their matriculation at The University of Memphis (Tennessee). The study focuses on three topics: (1) the percentage of community college students who transfer with associate degrees; (2) the students' patterns of institutional attendance, both…

This document is comprised of the one issue in volume 6 of "Bridges," a publication produced by the California Head Start-State Collaboration Office to detail the activities of the educational partnership and to provide relevant information to programs participating in the partnership. The Summer 2001 issue focuses on providing…

The appropriate use of technology in education is one viable solution to the challenge of training students for the Information Age. Benefits and barriers are presented in this paper. Benefits include improved student performance and behavior, and an efficient manner of procuring information. An additional benefit is the global awareness and…

This handbook, a companion to "Standards for Professional Development Schools," describes an assessment process for Professional Development School (PDS) participants, specifically for PDS standards, developed during 3 years of a field test. The assessment process is intended to support the continued development of PDS partnerships and…

This book presents papers by teacher educators who describe how they foster the integration of service learning into their teacher education programs, with the eventual goal of institutionalization. The papers are: "Introduction" (Marty Duckenfield and Kevin J. Swick); "An Experiment in Implementation" (Bill Yost);…

Based on an influential talk by Lilian Katz on the schools of Reggio Emilia, Italy, and the Project Approach, this paper recounts the establishment of a community of learners, including children, teachers, parents, and teacher educators, who worked together using the Project Approach. The work represents a deliberate effort to bring children into…

Virginia's Southeastern Community College (SCC) examined its service area and performance in the late 1980s and found that its enrollments had dropped while area unemployment rates were rising. Local officials estimated that nearly 2,000 manufacturing jobs had been lost in the service area--Columbus County--since the passage of the North American…

This report provides an overview and description of social and emotional learning (SEL) and service-learning (S-L) as tools to improve the lives and academic performance of students. It describes how the two practices are interrelated, and cites research evidence that supports the expanded use of both practices in the classroom. Also provided are…

The Constituency Building Study created a forum for seven grantees and 14 local colleagues to share and reflect on their work. The study proceeded through a series of conversations among the participants and researchers. These conversations explored participants' views of their work; their goals, strategies, and challenges; and their achievements.…

Improving school systems is critical to bridging the achievement gap and achieving federal accountability goals. Research in three urban districts partnered with a university-based intermediary organization sheds light on promising instructional reform strategies and challenges to bringing about systemwide change. Analyses of district efforts to…

While the benefits of partnerships between school and external groups are many (building social capital, enhancing educational reform, creating stronger communities, increasing academic achievements, and enhancing school performance), creating effective partnerships does not always come easily. One of the first decisions that organizations…

This handbook serves as a guide for state, district, and school leaders to organize and implement positive and permanent programs of school, family, and community partnerships. The book's eight chapters offer step-by-step strategies to improve school-family-community connections. Chapter 1 summarizes the theory and research on which the handbook…

This annual report details the 1997 activities of the SouthEastern Regional Vision for Education, the agency designated by the U.S. Department of Education as the regional educational laboratory responsible for developing national leadership and expertise in early childhood education. The report describes the partners involved and activities…

This book discusses how to use everyday data to create strategies for educational improvement in schools. It provides users with a process for building a performance indicator system, identifying the most important aspects of a school's innovational efforts and traps to avoid that may lead to misinterpretation of data. The introduction identifies…