Discusses the measurement of customer satisfaction with public school districts based on collaborative efforts generated by the Florida Schoolyear 2000 Initiative. Describes implementing customer satisfaction surveys in Florida, explains the testing of the surveys with businesses and parents, and discusses trends in performance improvement. (LRW)

Scotch College (Adelaide, Australia) has networked 90% of its classrooms. This article describes the campus computer network and its hardware and configuration; World Wide Web problems and solution; a "mini Internet" of curriculum-specific materials gathered from the Web; student and faculty use; student and staff training; security;…

Committed to utilizing information technology, the Westchester Library System (New York) made the World Wide Web publicly accessible. Describes the planning, implementation, and management process; obstacles involving financing; establishing Internet connectivity; and vendor negotiations. Westchester hired a Web manager, created Internet use…

In 5 years, the schools and community of Carrollton, Georgia, created a school systemwide network of 1,400 computers and 70 CD-ROMs connected by a fiber wide-area network to other city institutions and the Internet with grants from local, state, and national industry. After incorporating the new technologies into the curriculum, the dropout rate…

To promote recreational reading among high school students, a group of teachers created the Eliot Rosewater Indiana High School Book Award where students read and vote on their favorite 5 out of 12 nominated titles. Describes how media specialists promote the program and how educators integrate nominated books into classroom subject curricula.…

Small group discussions with Illinois State University freshmen to evaluate the integration of library instruction and technology training in a new gateway course found that students were confused about course purpose, that students received inadequate instruction in e-mail use, and that campus e-mail technology was inadequate to meet demands of…

Examines the teacher as a change agent when implementing a first-year, K-2 multicultural literacy learning program. A case study focuses on a kindergarten teacher's experiences and examines the program's development, the changes that occurred in classroom practice and home-school communication, and school staff resistance to change. (GR)

Examines parent-teacher relationships in early childhood programs, including those for children with disabilities, across five eras of the 20th century. The general approaches have been the earlier tendency to view parents as learners in need of information and the recent trend to involve them in program decision making. (SLD)

Presents a case study of how the Oak Park School District (Michigan) used feedback on student achievement in its 16-step strategic planning process to frame reflection and action to improve performance. The quantitative analysis of data grouped in relation to district standards is a unique aspect of their approach. (SLD)

This article describes an elementary school's use of a curriculum-based measurement (CBM) system that allowed teachers to develop reading and mathematics interventions to assist students with and without disabilities. Presents a step-by-step approach to developing CBM and guidelines for implementing CBM in entire classrooms or for individual…

The study examines relationships among variations in the implementation of participative decision making, instructional improvement, and student learning in 1 school district of about 3,300 students over 5 years. Findings support the conclusion that teacher participation in decision making is related to instructional improvement and better student…

Project RE:LEARNING failed to gain state-agency support because there was no widespread sense of crisis in Delaware to prompt restructuring, no shared conviction that schools needed dramatic changes. The Delaware story should caution systemic reformers to "front load" their energy and publicize serious problems. It takes more than a…

This article argues that the popular, but at times, misapplied approaches of person-centered planning can be remedied through scientific practices. It discusses how planners can more effectively achieve today's aspirations for people with developmental disabilities by systematically assessing adherence to the process of person-centered planning…

This article comments on an article (Holburn, 2002), that argues misapplied approaches of personal-centered planning (PCP) can be remedied through scientific practices. It discusses the charge of frequent misapplication of PCP and its widespread adoption and use contrasted to methodological alternatives for evaluating the contribution of PCP. (CR)

This article responds to critiques of a previous article that called for using applied behavior analysis to scientifically evaluate personal-centered planning (PCP). It discusses the need to overcome evaluation obstacles such as inferring internal causation as explanatory, confusing process with outcome, and requiring full consensus on…