Under the Post-Primary Project, Trinidad and Tobago may legitimately claim to have achieved some educational expansion under difficult economic circumstances. Although top-down curriculum management and a strong remediation emphasis limited program success, the school clustering concept, along with increased vocational training, offers a promising…

In 1990, the California Assessment Collaborative was created to support development and implementation of teacher-designed performance assessments. Four key practices help ensure that assessment serves instruction: articulating standards and assessment design; building teacher capacity for using assessment to improve instruction; building student…

Schools can no longer act alone as surrogate parents. First appearing in Florida's innovative legislation, the full-service school concept is catching on in several other states. Full-service schools integrate education, medical, social, and/or human services to meet families' needs in easily accessible locations. Primary health centers are key…

Dual-credit programs offer high school juniors and seniors the opportunity to earn college credits while also using the credits toward high school graduation. This article examines the growing trend of dual-credit programs, surveying states' initiatives, quality issues, and types of courses offered. (EV)

In Pennsylvania, instructional-support teams are being used as prereferral intervention groups to help teachers garner necessary school resources to meet students' increasingly complex academic, behavioral, social, and emotional needs. Onsite training elements include collaboration and team building, instructional assessment, instructional…

Site-based management tries to transform schools into communities where the appropriate people participate constructively in major decisions affecting them. Effective site councils have a well-designed community structure, enabling leadership, student and adult learning focus, and a schoolwide perspective. Districts should provide long-term…

Congress recently approved a Communications Decency Act (part of the sweeping Telecommunications Act of 1996) that criminalizes the act of making pornography available to minors on the Internet. School districts can avoid the darker corners of online access and reassure parents by adopting acceptable use policies, board of education policies, or…

Although those charged with developing learning standards for Maine students have tried to be inclusive, there are some likely challenges ahead. Planners need to include the views of less educated, less successful, or very conservative persons; reach consensus on defining the basics; resolve equity versus excellence issues; and incorporate…

Critiques Jerry Becker and Bill Jacob's article on the politics of California school mathematics in the March 2000 "Kappan" for characterizing current California standards as a return to the past. Mathematicians are apolitical, but must coordinate K-12 curriculum frameworks with college-level math courses. (MLH)

Introduces three white papers, prepared for Governor William Janklow's Capital City Conclave on Distance Education, an event intended to generate information to help South Dakota incorporate distance education into its educational systems. The papers, incorporating the themes "Start with the Children,""Empower the Workforce,"…

Suggests ways to develop strong middle-school reading programs involving efforts of states, school districts, and individual schools. Provides cost estimates. (PKP)

Provides an overview and examples of efforts by the Maryland State Department of Education, Division of Library Development and Services (DLDS) to increase collaborative benefits among agencies and groups targeting the youngest users. The "It's Never Too Early" public awareness campaign is designed to connect parents/caregivers of…

The "ACNJ Child Advocate" is published three times a year by the Association for Children of New Jersey (ACNJ). ACNJ collects, analyzes, and distributes information on the well-being of children in New Jersey so that policymakers can pinpoint problems and work toward solutions. It reports data on key indicators of child well-being in…

States are moving to close the gap between high school preparation and college and workforce readiness, but momentum is far greater in some policy areas than in others, a 50-state survey shows. At the National Education Summit on High Schools, state governors agreed to a broad set of actions needed to address the gap. Those include raising…

This article reports how Louisiana officials take hits amid strain to start schools. A year after Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc on New Orleans, the state of Louisiana finds itself in the highly unusual position of essentially starting from scratch--and directly operating--a batch of public schools in the city. While much attention has focused on…