This paper reports on a survey of day-care agencies to determine their need for library services. The survey was designed to determine: (1) which library services are being used by child care givers; (2) which services are not being used and may have the potential for promotion; (3) whether story time is provided regularly by care givers and what…

This guide instructs parents on how to maximize their children's educational opportunities at home and in school. A detailed agenda is given to help children and their teachers foster real learning, learning that is more than memorizing data or competing for grades. Real learning is discovering how to think, expressing creativity, and developing…

This publication is designed as a resource for practitioners to develop proactive practices that promote positive parent, family, and community relationships with schools. The strategies proposed are based on Epstein's 6-type model of parent and family involvement. Chapters 1 through 6 provide a comprehensive look at promoting and developing…

This report discusses the outcomes of a 1996-1997 review that investigated the current role of Learning Assistance Services in the delivery of special education support services to students in 115 British Columbia public schools and the students who receive these services. Learning Assistance Services are described as school-based, non-categorical…

This report describes a program for decreasing student underachievement. The targeted population consisted of two German classes at the third- and fourth-year levels in a high school in a suburb of a major metropolitan area. Persistent student underachievement was documented through homework percentages, participation percentages, overall grades,…

Success for All (SFA), a schoolwide research-based reform model developed by Robert Slavin and his associates at Johns Hopkins University, is based on the premise that all students can and must succeed in the early grades. The program targets students in the lower grades, providing them with intensive instruction in language arts. This effort is…

Authorized in 1994, schoolwide programs are intended to enable high-poverty Title I schools to improve curriculum and instruction for all students without restricting services to only some students. Also part of Title I, the Migrant Education Program (MEP) supports supplemental instruction and support services for qualifying migrant children. In…

Research has demonstrated that parent involvement has many beneficial effects for students. This action research project designed and implemented a program to raise the academic achievement of second-grade students by increasing parent involvement. The students attended two second-grade classrooms in a west-central Illinois school. The problem of…

This final report of a five-year project describes the activities of Parents, Let's Unite for Kids (PLUK), a Montana program designed to provide support, training, and information to parents of infants, toddlers, and children with disabilities. A priority of the project is to serve members of groups that have been traditionally underserved,…

A bilingual survey was developed to register the feelings of parents toward involvement in their children's preschool and kindergarten and to determine the unique needs of parents during interactions with the schools. The survey was tested with 50 parents, and the results were tabulated to determine differences between the feelings of Hispanic and…

This 1997 study followed up the Metropolitan Life Survey of the American Teacher 1987: Strengthening Links Between Home and School, comparing current teacher and student opinions on parental involvement in education with those of teachers and parents in 1987. Teachers and students, grades 7-12, completed surveys on actual versus desired level of…

This study explores, from a critical-theory perspective, the relationship of power among stakeholders in either a mandated or voluntary elementary-school-site decision-making body (SSDMB). The purpose is to describe, explain, and clarify complexities regarding the influence exerted by parents on the decision-making process in two selected…

This policy paper provides a list of questions and associated strategies that parents and parent organizations can address in an effort to ensure that statewide assessment systems fully and fairly include students with disabilities as required by the 1997 amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and other federal laws.…

This digest summarizes the reauthorized Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Amendments of 1997 (IDEA 97) with emphasis on changes in the new law. First, it highlights principal changes in the law. These changes include participation of children and youth with disabilities in state and districtwide assessment programs; the way in which…

This book synthesizes research findings on creativity and talent development. Part 1, "Definitions and Processes of Creativity," discusses the definition of creativity, creativity and psychology, federal definitions of giftedness and creativity, psychological research on creativity, traditional theories of the creative, common descriptions of the…