"Research Universities and the Future of America" presents critically important strategies for ensuring that our nation's research universities contribute strongly to America's prosperity, security, and national goals. Widely considered the best in the world, our nation's research universities today confront significant financial…

In recent years policymakers have increasingly looked to Extended Learning Time (ELT) as a means of improving student outcomes. As a result, some school districts have increased academic time for students by adding time to the school day or days to the school year. In other communities, schools and community-based organizations have partnered to…

The survey of earned doctorates, the data source for this report, is an annual census of individuals who receive research doctoral degrees from accredited U.S. academic institutions. The survey is sponsored by six federal agencies: the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Institutes of…

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to assess Egyptian Agricultural Technical School (ATS) teachers' implementation of active learning strategies in their classrooms. Methods: The Stages of Concern Questionnaire was administered to 230 participants in active learning workshops. After eliminating headmasters, supervisors and people no longer…

We conducted a series of summer workshops on bioinformatics to increase educators' knowledge of this new field of inquiry with the assumption that their knowledge will, in turn, impact student achievement. The workshops incorporated experiential learning and self-reflection (Loucks-Horsley et al. 1998). Educators demonstrated significant increases…

Many urban classrooms are facing an influx of students who are transient, part of migrant families who decide to reside in cities and large urban centers looking for financial stability and better educational opportunities for their children. This represents a different challenge for English as a second language, bilingual, and mainstream teachers…

This report examines the interim objectives for student achievement established by states in their accountability plans for the No Child Left Behind Act. These objectives lay out the percentages of students that must score at or above the proficient level on state tests each year, on the way toward meeting the law's ultimate goal of 100% of…

In February 2005, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report that raised concerns about the effectiveness of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Administration for Children and Families' (ACF) oversight of about 1,600 local organizations that receive nearly $7 billion in Head Start grants. GAO was asked to report…

What to do about persistently low-performing schools is a pressing challenge for policymakers and educators across the nation. Schools that fail to make "adequate yearly progress" (AYP) for five consecutive years under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) must be "restructured". The 3,500 schools in the United States currently in…

From year to year, child welfare directors allocate resources in the hope that their efforts will improve children's outcomes. Recently, with the help of the federal government, states have invested significant resources in the sort of information technology needed to run a smarter, more accountable child welfare system. In addition, science has…

In fiscal year 2008, about 31 million children participated in the National School Lunch Program and more than 10 million children participated in the School Breakfast Program each school day. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) spent $11.7 billion on the school meal programs in that year. The majority of…

Across the nation, the final stage of school restructuring is being reached by an inexorably increasing number of schools. Under the No Child Left Behind law, if a school does not make its adequate yearly progress targets after four previous years of being "in need of improvement," it must implement a fundamental restructuring plan. The…

The Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) is the primary source of federal support for preparing researchers and teacher educators whose focus is students with disabilities. The OSEP Leadership Training Grant Program awards projects to more universities than any other federal agency, but to do so it provides smaller awards to universities…

This study is about a community computing lab established by a U.S. Department of Commerce grant to bridge the Digital Divide in a rural Arizona American Indian community, a project called "Native Connection" (a pseudonym). This paper describes the process of integrating new literacies associated with a high-tech computer lab into the…

The federal accountability system, made universal through the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002, is a system driven by quotas and sanctions, stipulating the progression of underperforming schools through sanctions based on meeting performance quotas for specific demographic groups. The authors examine whether the current federal accountability…