Drawing on the authors' considerable knowledge of the research and of federal and state policymaking in middle and high reading and writing, the Alliance for Excellent Education has worked for the past 2 months, at no charge to the state, to review existing data, gather opinions, study literacy achievement trends, identify literacy programs and…

This book addresses crucial questions about how to create full access to the general education curriculum for children with disabilities. Based on years of research and innovation at CAST (The Center for Applied Special Technology), the book provides a helpful overview of the digital solutions that are at the forefront of efforts to create…

For over the last 20 years, educators have been trying to find the best practice in using technology for student learning. Some of the most widely used applications with computers have been student learning of programming, word processing, Web research, spreadsheets, games, and Web design. The difficulty with integrating many of these activities…

Historically, reform efforts to address poor student achievement have focused on a variety of issues other than teacher quality. Movements such as TQM (Total Quality Management), class size reduction (CSR), school leadership, parental involvement, and multicultural curriculum have not directly addressed the power or influence of the individual…

Perhaps more than most academic issues, remedial education evokes fervent emotions and unyielding opinions. Consensus is hard to reach even about the nomenclature, with remedial conveying a sense of deficiency in need of correction pitted against the developmental approach that focuses on change and growth. On campus, the many aspects of the…

This article features the Challenge School, a magnet school in the CherryCreek School District in Colorado that focuses on academically advanced, motivated, and gifted students. The school was developed as an alternative to best meet the needs of these students. The Challenge School focuses on high student achievement and commensurate academic…

Online education holds great potential for rural states like South Dakota, which has been recognized for advances in distance education. To maximize the potential of online learning, design elements that students believe are needed for successful online learning experiences must be identified. In this study, we present the qualitative and…

The issues of teacher empowerment and decentralized management have been a part of the educational reform agenda for decades. Recent legislation has required that leadership teams have teacher, support staff, and parent representation, and possibly student representation. Principals receive specific instructions from their Boards of Education as…

This article addresses the issues of how cultural historical theory of activity can help design democratic teacher education classrooms aimed at developmental learning and dialogical, humanitarian thinking of students and prospective teachers. On the basis of retrospective analysis, the author begins by summarizing activity-based approaches to…

The area of integration of technology in education is a continuous effort that revolves around looking for factors and practices that can be applied to encourage faculty to integrate technology into their areas of teaching. Web-based instruction (WBI) is one of the technologies affecting higher education, and historically Black colleges and…

In a study to evaluate the drug treatment and aftercare efforts sponsored by the State Department's International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Bureau, residential Therapeutic Community (TC) treatment programs in four European countries-Poland, Spain, Slovenia, and Italy-were examined to identify promising practices and to assess lessons…

This article explores the appropriateness and implications of adopting and adapting the business-oriented concept of "best practice" in international schools. Because businesses and international schools tend to have contrasting goals and time-frames within which they seek to achieve their objectives, it is expected that "best practice" in schools…

This article will draw on an investigation of teachers' research in a small-scale project involving 19 schools in the North West region of England. The teachers engaged in the research were funded by a government initiative, the Best Practice Research Scholarships Programme, and were mentored and tutored by university staff. The sample is very…

To address a public relations problem faced by a large urban public school district in Texas, we conducted action research that resulted in an audited self-monitoring system for high-stakes testing environments. The system monitors violations of testing protocols while identifying and disseminating best practices to improve the education of…

This paper presents the main results of a comparative study carried out by a French-Japanese research team. Its focus is the daily life of under-ones in day care centres in two cultural contexts--France and Japan. Based on three kinds of data--official texts, videotaped observations and caregivers' discourses--the study highlights the links…