An important task of special educators is helping students with disabilities develop their self-determination skills. Considerable evidence suggests, however, that the goal of providing these students with the motivation and sense of independence that leads to self-determined behavior has not often been achieved. A multiple-case design was used in…

Valerie Lee and Douglas Ready explore the influences of the high school curriculum on student learning and the equitable distribution of that learning by race and socioeconomic status. They begin by tracing the historical development of the U.S. comprehensive high school and then examine the curricular reforms of the past three decades. During the…

Over the past decade, the Gurian Institute has trained more than forty thousand teachers in more than two thousand schools and districts, both coed and single-sex. The institute's trainers have worked with public and private schools, Montessori schools, and a variety of charter and independent schools in fifteen countries; it has therefore been…

This study examined the effects of an extensive inquiry-based field experience on pre service elementary teachers' personal agency beliefs, a composite measure of context beliefs and capability beliefs related to teaching science. The research combined quantitative and qualitative approaches and included an experimental group that utilized the…

Marnie is a resident of an unnamed School District ("the District"). In January 2000 at the age of 13, Marnie was involved in a bicycle accident that severely damaged her central nervous system, leaving her without use of her legs or left hand and cognitively impaired. She had not received special education previously. By September 2001,…

This article explores the core themes and issues of private residential service delivery for children and youth in Ontario, with a specific focus on staffed group care within this sector. Such exploration highlights the juxtaposition of the public rights of children with the private world of service provision. Based on twenty interviews with…

Bethpage Union Free School District in New York is a high-performing district by almost any current accountability measure. Yet administrators and teachers worried that they were not doing enough to prepare their students as critical thinkers for the 21st century. Inspired by the curriculum framework of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, the…

Federal, State and school-based professional development has become a multi-million dollar educational enterprise in Australia. Yet there are no published models for the making of systems-level professional development policy. Reviewing the literature on the characteristics of effective professional development programs, this paper proposes a…

This article shows the possibility of achieving social transformation by applying the triple helix model, which establishes the university's participation and its research centers, the government and its three levels, and the private sector (Etzkowitz, 2002). These three allies have shared the vision and participated during the entire process,…

In 1998, the California legislature passed Senate Bill SB 2042 which replaced the previous teacher certification legislation. The new law required that all elementary and secondary teacher certification programs in the State of California align their programs with new teaching standards. These standards included Teacher Performance Expectations…

A preventive intervention for reducing physical and relational aggression, peer victimization, and increasing prosocial behavior was developed for use in early childhood classrooms. Nine classrooms were randomly assigned to be intervention rooms (N = 202 children) and nine classrooms were control rooms (N = 201 children). Classroom was the unit of…

This study investigated the impact of a school-based mentoring program on at-risk students' office referrals, unexcused absences, and school attitude. Students who participated in the mentoring program had statistically significant reductions in office referrals and statistically significant improvements in school attitude. Based on an analysis of…

The authors examined racial/ethnic disparities in mental health service use based on problem type (internalizing/externalizing). A diverse sample of youth in contact with public sectors of care and their families provided reports of youth's symptoms and functional impairment during an initial interview. Specialty and school-based mental health…

The purposes of metaevaluation go beyond the traditional functions of accountability and enhancement. It helps guide strategic organizational change and legitimizes evaluation systems. Metaevaluation results can also be used to create checklists so that the persons responsible for any evaluation can revise, monitor, and control them by themselves.…

Labor market conditions, a pervasive public discourse about the benefits of higher education, and parental hopes push many young working-class people into university. The institutional culture and demands of university, however, often remain elusive and fraught with uncertainty. In this paper, I draw on qualitative interviews with…