Develops a rationale for using performance assessments. Describes a number of performance assessment techniques and provides examples from a career development program. Provides suggestions to counselors, teachers, and administrators who want to use performance assessments to improve teaching and learning in career development programs. (SR)

Examined ways in which families became involved in 21 classrooms in 9 state-funded rural Illinois prekindergarten programs for children identified as at-risk for later school failure. Found that wide variations existed in parent involvement and family-school partnership initiatives implemented across the nine programs. Findings pose implications…

This article discusses a participatory action research (PAR) approach to conducting family research. It proposes a model of PAR implementation level including the options of family members as research leaders and researchers as ongoing advisors, researchers and family members as coresearchers, and researches as leaders, and family members as…

Assessed home visit quality in an Early Head Start program using measures developed in collaboration with program staff. Found that parent ratings were high, indicating customer satisfaction with home visiting. Families perceived by staff as improving the most had home visitors observed as most effective at engaging parents and involving parent…

Observations in 100 congregated community and institutional day-program sites for individuals with severe disabilities indicated that approximately half of consumer time was spent in purposeful activity, 75 percent of which was age-appropriate. In 20 percent of the sites most activity was age-inappropriate. Recommended program evaluation and…

For many students and lecturers evaluation is confined to some form of survey. Whilst these can provide useful feedback, their focus is likely to reflect the values and norms of those commissioning and undertaking the evaluation. For real improvements in quality to occur both lecturers' and students' perspectives of factors that are important need…

Given that the society has not been able to redistribute financial support away from day and sheltered programs, it needs to cut off the supply of consumers. To make this happen, Rusch and Braddock offered two recommendations in their study: (1) All students must leave high school either competitively employed or admitted to a postsecondary…

At the start of the New Year and the second Obama administration, a national dialogue about extending and improving the school year for "all" students--especially those students who face limited resources within and outside their schools--should be a national priority. Students from affluent families already make up for the short school…

As traditional universities grapple with an onslaught of demand for distance education a recurring call to ensure quality in such offerings arises. The Quality Matters Program intends to guarantee such quality through a peer-centered process and offers a certification process to help assure quality in online and blended courses. This report is a…

The Australian government initiated a review of higher education in 2008. One of the outcomes of the review was the formation of a national regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), with responsibilities to: register all higher education providers, accredit the courses of the non self-accrediting providers, assure…

This research study compared the effects of the intrusive form of developmental academic advising (IDAA) and the influence of additional academic support services on the mean cumulative Grade Point Averages (GPAs) of 4 randomly assembled groups of academically at-risk college students during 2 separate semesters. Academically at-risk students are…

This article explores an urban partnership and service-learning project deliberately created to improve literacy and strengthen learning communities in an urban, Latino neighborhood of Chicago. The project aligns activities and objectives with resources and needs of university participants, a Latino community organization, and local public…

Communities of practice as organisations of learning have developed different forms as: task-based, practice-based or knowledge based communities (Barab et al., 2004). The paper presents a case study of a successful community of practice developed under the umbrella of Council of Europe Pestalozzi programme for teacher development. The programme…

This is the latest in a series of case studies highlighting best practices High Schools That Work (HSTW) network schools and districts are implementing to prepare students better for further studies and careers. Fort Mill High School is in Fort Mill, South Carolina, an outlying suburb of Charlotte, North Carolina. Fort Mill links high quality…

The University of Wisconsin--La Crosse offers the first web-based medical dosimetry program in the nation. There is no data to research a program of this type. This research consisted of the evaluation of other distance education programs including health profession programs in addition to face-to-face medical dosimetry programs. There was need to…