This study examines why 51 schools declined an invitation to participate in a state-funded educator incentive initiative, the Texas Educator Excellence Grant (TEEG) program. Using data from an ongoing evaluation of the TEEG program conducted by the National Center on Performance Incentives (NCPI) under contract with Texas Education Agency, this…

The purpose of this exploratory case study was to identify, investigate, and describe factors that contributed to the academic success of Phelps High School, a rural, isolated, Appalachian high school in Pike County Kentucky. The academic index of the school in 2000 was 48% and in a six year period the academic index of the school improved to 94%.…

The purpose of this paper is to outline a number of very general questions pertinent to people who are dissatisfied enough with currently institutionalized educational provisions to seek to accomplish fundamental educational change. (Author)

Reviews four current books on the dropout problem. Two are termed state of the art, but all are limited because the needs of at-risk students are numerous, the programs for them are diverse, and theories of student engagement are not yet well developed. (DM)

Describes the development of the University of South Florida as a confident, research-oriented university with strong community roots and delineates some of the conditions needed to create such a sense of identity. (EV)

Describes how the University of Wisconsin, Parkside is becoming an engaged university. Discusses regional context, steps taken toward change, linkage between committed leadership and institutionalization of change, and resulting institutional structures. Suggests that key to the process was a working team that visited every department to uncover…

Increased parent school involvement is associated with better academic outcomes; yet, proximal contributors to this effect remain understudied. We focus on one potential proximal contributor, youth's positive and negative future self-images or "possible selves," reasoning that if parent school involvement fosters possible selves, then…

The purpose of this study was two-fold: (1) to identify how school factors were related to perpetration of dating violence among adolescents; and (2) to assess how these factors may reduce or exacerbate the relationship between parental domestic violence and adolescents' perpetration of dating violence, while accounting for individual and family…

Discusses the issue of parent participation in the schools in historic context. Describes a parent participation program developed by the Yale Child Study Center Team in the New Haven Public Schools. The program successfully improved the academic ranking of the school from 32nd out of 33 schools in 1969 to 3rd out of 26 schools in 1984. (MD)

The public school system is urged to play a pivotal role in the detection and prevention of child abuse and neglect. The results of one school district's efforts to play a role as the advocate of children's rights are described. (CS)

Describes the various factors that motivate higher education institutions in their pursuit of engagement with the community. Discusses the challenges facing those pursuing such engagement, such as disagreements in the academic community about the merits of community engagement. Asserts that engagement, despite such challenges, is well worth it.…

In this article, the author explains how administrators who have feelings about isolation and disconnection from other Montessori schools may find support and networking through a variety of ways. Administrators may connect with others through the AMS (American Montessori Society) Heads of Schools ListServer, a forum for discussion of topics…

The Dawn Project is a system of care responsible for creating and implementing an interagency collaborative approach to service provision. Systems of care are spectrums of services organized to meet the needs facing youth with serious emotional and behavioral difficulties. This study examined the relationship between school involvement in the Dawn…