"America Goes Back to School" is a nationwide initiative to encourage and support family and community involvement in improving children's learning. This activity kit provides tools to help families and community members develop and become involved in partnerships to improve students' academic success. The kit's "organizer's…

The National Network for Educational Renewal (NNER) has established partner schools in 13 states as part of the Professional Development School (PDS) approach simultaneously to renew schools and teacher education through cooperative programs between institutions of higher education and local school districts. Joint responsibility, on the part of…

This publication describes activities UNESCO is carrying out and the objectives it is pursuing. The following articles are included: (1) "Education and Human Development" (Federico Mayor, Director-General of UNESCO); (2) "Education and the Future" (Colin N. Power, Assistant Director-General for Education, UNESCO); (3)…

This paper describes the initial stages and activities associated with establishing professional development school (PDS) partnerships. Efforts to formulate working groups to develop PDSs began in 1987, and this discussion shares reflections on three years' work. PDSs generally begin when members of the college of education and local school…

This document provides a framework for the development of sustained and coordinated activities to support Kentucky teachers in learning the new roles and ways of teaching envisioned in the Kentucky Educational Reform Act. The report begins with a discussion of the context of reform, which is seen as consisting of two realities: new expectations…

This report summarizes the results of a survey undertaken by the Joint National Committee for Languages to determine the existence of collaborative efforts in foreign language study and international education that might serve as representative models for other states. Of the 40 states that responded to the survey, 26 reported having academic and…

The East Baltimore Revitalization Project, a fifteen-year, $800 million redevelopment initiative, seeks to transform a struggling area of the city near Johns Hopkins Hospital. A unique partnership of the Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions and the Annie E. Casey Foundation is supporting the City of Baltimore in this…

In 1997, twelve Karen Burmese teachers brought a Vision Paper to the Tham Hin refugee camp in Thailand. The teachers had recently written this Paper after much consultation with their Mergui-Tavoy villagers, students, leaders, and school dropouts. Over the following five years teams developed a project outlining 10 steps to educational reform,…

The Ford Motor Company launched a new pre-engineering curriculum for high schools in the Fall of 2004. Building on an earlier manufacturing program, the development process for the Ford Partnership for Advanced Studies took approximately three years. Ford and the course designers wanted the new program to incorporate the best principles and…

This article offers responses from Joyce V. Johnstone and Kevin M. Hanbury to the article "Urban revitalization: A case study of one Catholic elementary school's journey," by R. F. Owens. Johnstone mentions that the Owens article tells the story of one school in Chicago. Although the study itself may not be highly generalizable, it is…

This paper describes the role of Center for Collaborative Education (CCE) in supporting a unique urban public school network, the Boston Pilot Schools Network. By informing the educational community of its strategies, activities, and challenges, CCE hopes to contribute to the understanding of how change promoted from outside the school can affect…

The articles in this issue of "Focal Point" focus on the Research and Training Center's current work, which reflects the evolution of expectations for partnering with youth and families. Partnering successfully requires not only a philosophical commitment to the value, but also intentional, specific steps to redesign services and reallocate…

In this document, the West Virgina Higher Education Policy Commission provides a statistical evaluation of enrollment rates, academic achievement, scholarships and loans, training, and recruitment of students at major health sciences and rural health schools in West Virginia. Some of the highlights from this 2005 Report Card include: (1) Almost…

Ensuring that children enter school ready to learn is now a well-established national goal. Dramatic changes over the past three decades in U.S. families and the economy, as well as emerging research on the importance of early brain development, have increased the demand for public investments in early childhood supports and services, especially…

Dual credit programs were first established in the 1970s, gradually gaining popularity in the 1980s, and expanding enormously through the 1990s. These programs are designed to allow high school students to begin college-level coursework and simultaneously earn high school and college credit. While the original intent was to provide more…