The action research study revealed the effectiveness of recent interventions to the attendance process of a single elementary school located in the Southern United States. The study evaluated the benefits and impact of the interventions, and other possible interventions to increase student attendance. An explanation of each intervention is…

Schooling improvement initiatives have demonstrated that moderate but significant achievement gains are possible with well designed interventions, but there is little research into whether these gains can be sustained. The present study examines the extent to which acceleration in achievement made during a three-year literacy intervention and the…

By implementing a system of common formative assessments, the teachers at an American urban elementary school improved student achievement and facilitated their own professional development. By aligning content standards with assessments and purposeful instruction, the teachers at this school developed a depth of knowledge about their content…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to present a unique version of the balanced scorecard developed and applied by the faculty of a university division. Design/methodology/approach: The paper uses a case study approach and uses the experiences of the faculty of a business school to describe the process and benefits of developing a custom…

Early Head Start is a comprehensive, two-generation federal initiative begun in 1995 aimed at enhancing the development of infants and toddlers while strengthening low-income families. This report contains information from the Survey of Early Head Start Programs. Beyond the need for an updated picture of the Early Head Start program, the Survey of…

KIDS COUNT, a project of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, is a national and state-by-state effort to track the status of children in the United States. By providing policymakers and citizens with benchmarks of child well-being, KIDS COUNT seeks to enrich local, state, and national discussions concerning ways to secure better futures for all…

A growing body of evidence confirms what makes sense intuitively--quality matters for participation in after school programs. Nationwide, a chief concern among after school stakeholders is programming for middle schoolers--too "old" to be told what to do after school and too "young" to be left home alone. A national dialogue about the state of…

Presbyterian Ladies College (PLC) is a 130-year-old independent girls' school in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne. Teaching students from ages 4 to 18, PLC has a reputation for academic excellence. Geography is a separate subject taught as a part of the core curriculum in the secondary school. The College, which uses principally Macintosh…

In this paper, we conceptualize and develop an index of sociodemographic risk that we hypothesize will be an improvement over the standard poverty measure as a measure of risk for children's development. The poverty line is widely used in government statistics and in research but is also widely acknowledged to have multiple shortcomings. Using…

A framework is presented for understanding how errors arise in institutional research, and principles are suggested to avert errors in work processes of institutional research offices. Error is defined as a product which fails to meet professional standards, has unacceptable process limitations, or is unacceptable to a client. The following four…

This report describes the final status of classroom practice in Texas prekindergarten programs in comparison to initial study findings and findings from a self-study component implemented in 1993 with prekindergarten staffs participating in the study. Findings from the longitudinal component indicated positive trends in academic performance for…

An evaluation was conducted of the educational programs and facilities at two male juvenile corrections schools in Wisconsin (Ethan Allen and Lincoln Hills). Surveys were developed in cooperation with administrative personnel at both schools and given to all students, instructors, and support staff. A total of 573 students, 76 teachers, and 140…

In response to the recommendations of the New Jersey Special Education Study Commission and input from parents, educators, and the general public, the New Jersey Department of Education's Division of Special Education developed "A Plan To Revise Special Education in New Jersey" (1986), commonly called P2R. P2R calls for changes in the…

This paper is a transcript of a videotaped roundtable discussion on the role of volunteers in adult literacy in Canada. The participants expressed concern that tutors may not be able to provide the quality of learning experience for adult students that trained teachers could and that volunteers could be taking jobs that should go to trained…

In the fragmented federal system, over 150 programs provide employment training assistance to adults and out-of-school youth. Individually, these programs have well-intended purposes. Collectively, they raise four concerns: (1) they are difficult for job seekers and employers to access and for administrators to implement; (2) they overlap and…