Sixteen regional forums were held in Minnesota in the fall of 1995 to determine what form the Education and Employment Transition System, or School-to-Work System, mandated by state legislation, would take and which elements it should contain. Forum participants represented business, labor, education, parents, teachers, counselors, and other…

The Wisconsin Technical College System Board Phase V Equity Staff Development project continued staff development efforts to eliminate bias and stereotyping in vocational education. Based upon evaluations indicating a need for a postsecondary equity training model, five technical college equity representatives attended two planning sessions to…

Since the passage of legislation requiring public colleges and universities to develop plans to increase the participation and advancement of underrepresented groups, the Illinois community colleges have used both special population grant funds and local college funds to address the needs of these groups. This report summarizes statewide…

Barriers to progress in educational reform exist inside and outside the education system. Some arise where new practices encounter traditional expectations and boundaries, but others go much deeper than education, such as poverty, racism, local political conflicts, and human resistance to change. The following five categories of barriers are…

Based on the finding that the most important determinant of child care quality is the presence of consistent, well-trained, and well-compensated caregivers, this report discusses strategies to improve compensation in child care. It analyzes structural and social barriers to investing in decent-paying child care jobs; profiles a wide range of…

The SchoolTech initiative, a state-funded pilot project, was designed to empower teachers to develop innovative approaches to academic and extracurricular activities using technology. Elementary and secondary schools (n=10) in North Carolina were provided with hardware and software that had the capability of accessing Internet resources. Teachers…

This plan outlines the proposed professional development strategies and actions required for Maryland to achieve full success of the "Schools For Success 2000" school reform efforts. The plan's vision is reviewed and the leadership, resources, support systems, strategic alliance partner, best practices, and educational goals required to…

This report includes summaries of activities and accomplishments in the state's efforts to implement performance standards and core measures as well as programs in the following: (1) secondary, postsecondary, and adult occupational; (2) single parent, displaced homemaker, and single pregnant women; (3) sex equity; (4) criminal offenders; (5)…

One component of the Maryland School Performance Program (MSPAP) is the state's performance-based assessments, criterion-referenced tests that require students to apply what they know and can do to solve problems and display other higher-order thinking skills. This document helps parents, teachers, students, and other citizens understand the tasks…

One component of the Maryland School Performance Assessment; Program (MSPAP) is the state's performance-based assessments, criterion-referenced tests that require students to apply what they know and can do to solve problems and display other higher-order thinking skills. This document helps parents, teachers, students, and other citizens…

This score interpretation guide is designed to help administrators and classroom teachers understand the scores and scales of the 1994 and Beyond Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP). MSPAP scale scores indicate a school's level of performance in the content areas of reading, writing, language usage, mathematics, science, and…

Linking teacher treatment to student impact is not as straightforward as it may seem initially. The difficulties in measuring the impact on students are illustrated in this discussion of the Ohio Statewide Systemic Initiative (SSI). Since the inception of the SSI, the external evaluators had planned to use data from the state's proficiency tests…

Performance based assessment refers to tasks that require students to construct responses or take actions to demonstrate specific knowledge or skills. Performance assessment tasks appear in a variety of formats, but they focus on higher order skills and are nonroutine, and sometimes loosely structured, in nature. A number of concerns have been…

The industrial education program in the Teachers College at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) is using a currently established technical training environment available across the state: the state's community colleges. UNL uses the community colleges' technical expertise in two ways. First, traditional on-campus industrial technology…

This report provides direction for assessment policy and practice in employability and work force education and training programs serving youth and adult learners in Iowa. It provides a research base for the consideration of common assessment instruments for youth and adult learners in these programs. The report first identifies existing…