This State-specific summary report serves as an assessment of Tennessee's annual Race to the Top implementation. The Year 3 report for Phase 1 and 2 grantees highlights successes and accomplishments, identifies challenges, and provides lessons learned from implementation from approximately September 2012 through September 2013. In Year 3,…

A critical state-level indicator of progress in public education is student achievement annual performance and change over time. The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) has been very active in tracking and reporting on student achievement results and using state assessment scores and other data to analyze achievement trends. A central…

The National Dropout Prevention Center for Students with Disabilities (NDPC-SD) was assigned the task of compiling, analyzing, and summarizing the data for Indicator 2--Dropout--from the FFY 2009 Annual Performance Reports (APRs) and the revised State Performance Plans (SPPs), which were submitted to the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP)…

In response to recent social, economic, and pedagogical challenges to tertiary-level teaching and learning, universities are increasingly investigating and adopting e-learning as a way to engage and motivate students. This paper reports on the first year of a two-year (2009-2010) qualitative multiple case study research project in New Zealand.…

A central commitment for professional development schools (PDSs) is to link preservice teacher preparation and in-service teacher professional development with improved learning outcomes for pupils. PDSs are expected to improve student achievement in two primary ways: (1) by enriching and intensifying the learning environment through professional…

The Common Ground Multicultural Dialogue program in the Department of Resident Life at the University of Maryland is an innovative peer education program designed to teach skills for engagement through exploration of contemporary multicultural societal dilemmas. The Common Ground Dialogue Program was launched in 2000 to provide undergraduate…

Capstone courses in accounting programs bring students experiences integrating across the curriculum (University of Washington, 2005) and offer unique (Sanyal, 2003) and transformative experiences (Sill, Harward, & Cooper, 2009). Students take many accounting courses without preparing complete sets of financial statements. Accountants not only…

The expansion of tertiary education, an intensity of focus on accountability and performance, and the emergence of new governance and management structures drives an economic fiscal perspective of the value of learning and teaching. Accurate and meaningful models defining financial sustainability are therefore proposed as an imperative for…

Through an examination of literature in the fields of Basic Writing and developmental education, this essay provides some historical perspective and examines the prevalent discourses on the use of computer-mediated technologies in the basic writing classroom. The author uses Bertram Bruce's (1997) framework of various "stances" on…

To organize and coordinate the efforts of many volunteers, a framework for volunteer engagement is needed. The "GEMS" Model of volunteer administration was developed to assist Extension professionals and volunteer coordinators to effectively administer volunteer programs without delivering the program themselves. The GEMS Model is…

Two eleven-year-old boys face a bulletin board, arranging silver thumbtacks into shapes of fighter planes. The boys' play revolves around the action video game, its language, strategies, heroes, villains, obstacles, and continual updates. As an after-school art teacher and student-teacher supervisor, the contact the author has with young artists…

In this article, Gary Matkin, Dean of Continuing Education, Distance Learning, and Summer Session at the University of California, Irvine and long-time member of UPCEA, talks about his experience with higher and continuing education in California. The situation of public universities has changed considerably, and his 43 years as an undergraduate,…

With more than a quarter of a century of filmmaking under his belt, Spike Lee has begun working with students to provide opportunities for them to reach their dreams. The tough-minded director on set has proven to have a soft spot when it comes to youth and the next generation of filmmakers. Lee is a welcomed guest lecturer offering candid…

Service-learning has been covered extensively in the literature and, to a lesser extent, in social work curricula. What is missing from the discourse is a discussion of students' perceptions of service-learning, particularly as it is situated within a human diversity course and occurs at their field education site. Based on the qualitative reports…

Mainframe is used for hosting large commercial databases, transaction servers and applications that require a greater degree of reliability, scalability and security. Customer Information Control System (CICS) is a mainframe software framework for implementing transaction services. It is designed for rapid, high-volume online processing. In order…