The service learning movement has gained new energy with the election of President Obama, who has made increasing service a central plank of his higher-education agenda. But across the board, colleges and universities struggle with service learning's twin goals of providing meaningful help to the community and academic rigor to students. The…

The author suggests the Logic Model, used especially in the Health Science field, as a model for evaluating the quality of the educational doctorate (i.e., EdD). The manuscript highlights the newly developed EdD program at Virginia Tech.

The MBA education has begun in America and now it has become mature after nearly one hundred years' development. Although China's MBA merely has a history of 17 years, it has already gained great achievements. In 1991, 9 universities in China had MBA program and 86 students enrolled in. In 2007, the two numbers were 127 and 59,776 respectively.…

This report presents outcomes from Public/Private Ventures research on CORAL, an eight-year, $58 million after-school initiative of The James Irvine Foundation. Findings described in the report demonstrate the relationship between high-quality literacy programming and academic gains and underscore the potential role that quality programs may play…

This publication highlights the Reading First program as the academic cornerstone of the No Child Left Behind Act, and cites state achievement data indicating that Reading First students from nearly every grade and subgroup have made gains in reading proficiency. Restoration of full funding for the program has been requested for Fiscal Year 2009.

In early 2008 the Board of Directors of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) convened a Task Force on Accreditation to work toward a unified approach to accreditation. The Task Force brought together AACTE representatives with the two major federally-recognized accrediting agencies in educator preparation--the…

Family Group Decision Making (FGDM), also known as Family Group Conferencing, is a process that brings together extended family networks--aunts, uncles, grandparents, neighbors, and friends--to make important decisions that might otherwise be made by professionals. Prior to a FGDM conference, a facilitator engages extended family members and…

This article illustrates how effective a threat assessment program like the Mid-Valley Student Threat Assessment (STAT) program can be in dealing with violent and threatening students. STAT is a a regional system that draws together resources from schools, mental health agencies, law enforcement bureaus, and other youth-serving organizations in…

This article is the eighth part of a 12-part series that chronicles the life of a fictional family--Amita and Samir, and their daughter with special needs, Anjali. This article describes the transition process experienced by Anjali as she learns to become independent despite her disabilities. In this article, Anjali's experiences as an employee at…

Up to 25% of adolescent girls experience an episode of major depression, at least twice the rate found with adolescent boys. In addition to reducing the suffering associated with depression, prevention efforts with this high-risk population have the potential to avert short- and long-term functional impairment, reduce the risk of associated mental…

This article describes the role of psychosocial support programs in American Red Cross-sponsored humanitarian assistance efforts in international disasters. The American Red Cross psychosocial support program consists of four specific components: participatory crisis assessment, dealing with survivors' root shock, community mobilization, and…

This chapter explores how the structure of large complex organizations such as Cooperative Extension affects their ability to support internal evaluation of their programs and activities. Following a literature review of organizational structure and its relation to internal evaluation capacity, the chapter presents the results of interviews with…

In an effort to be comprehensive, schools often outline sweeping plans for improvement in multiple goal areas. Although well-intended, the efforts may be either too diffuse to have much impact, or so overwhelming that staff become immobilized. A school that chooses to proceed in too limited a manner, on the other hand, may run the risk of…

A principal may have implemented a program that boasted glowing reports but didn't live up to its promise. The cause of this disparity could be that the program didn't match the school's and students' needs in terms of the curricular focus or that previous results were more positive than warranted. However, another possibility could be that the…

This article presents the conceptual foundations of the Education for Peace (EFP) integrative curriculum, reviews its contents, and briefly describes its impact on students, teachers, staff and parents/guardians in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The curriculum was developed in 2000, first employed in six pilot schools and then implemented in 112 primary…