The first step to meeting the fundamental aim of any educational institution is to understand clearly what the students need. Needs assessment is a tool educators can use to help meet this goal. Needs assessment data suggest the basis for plans, strategies, and practices that may ultimately lead to school improvement. This chapter reviews issues…

Advisory groups have played an essential role in improving the school climate and conditions for young adolescents in schools. How middle school decision makers go about the process of designing or re-designing an advisory program needs to be considered. A discussion is presented of the background information that helps define advisories. It…

Consistent with educational reform efforts, the Quality Performance Assessment (QPA) Process Module was designed to disseminate information about the QPA Process, and to be a training vehicle so that members of the Kansas State Board of Education Outcomes Education Team and the Kansas education community might have the knowledge base necessary to…

The Ardmore, Oklahoma, School District developed the 3-year Pyramid Project to implement the following recommendations of the Sid W. Richardson Foundation Study of exemplary programs for high ability students: (1) broaden the process for assessing student abilities, (2) adopt continuous progress and appropriate pacing, (3) cultivate students'…

This handbook for administrators of school district mathematics programs outlines a set of procedures for implementing the Pennsylvania Comprehensive Mathematics Plan (PCMP) and provides a degree of standardization and a planning framework to encourage the communication of related ideas and successes. The procedural steps, instruments, checklists,…

A study is reported that examined the way staff development functions in schools, the effects of staff development, and the interaction between staff development and other activities and conditions in school systems. The study took place in a large urban school district (in the Southeast) that is heavily committed to and involved in staff…

After describing the programs and staff at Ian Bazalgette Junior High School in Calgary, Canada, this document reviews the problems at the school in 1979 that led to the implementation of the Effective Schools Program. A review of literature related to effective schools precedes an explanation of seven school effectiveness factors adopted by the…

This digest focuses on the contributions counselors can make to help schools achieve educational excellence and enhance both the quantity and quality of student learning. (BH)

Improving the quality of learning is basic to raising academic standards. Research on postsecondary learning improvement has provided a base of practical knowledge to guide faculty and planners. Successful learning improvement programs share two essential characteristics: they are more comprehensive in the range of students' needs met, and they…

According to this report, since the 1960s many of the gains of post-Sputnik reform have been allowed to slip away and, as reports of the early 1980s have emphasized, elementary and secondary education has been neglected. The shock of technological and economic losses to other countries has once again alerted the United States to its educational…

Developed by Japanese corporations to improve productivity and product quality, quality circles (QC's) are small, voluntary groups of workers who share common job responsibilities and who meet regularly to generate solutions to problems. Features of QC's that are applicable to schools are examined in the nine articles summarized in this annotated…

Through the process of clinical supervision, systematic approaches permit effective change by the collaborative analysis of teaching. This guide's first section, "Beginnings," describes the process of clinical supervision. Emphasis is upon teachers working collaboratively to discover implicit teaching messages and to assimilate new…

This textbook is designed for use: (1) as a text in college classes in curriculum and instruction, educational administration, public policy, school counseling, school psychology, and the social psychology of education; and (2) as a resource for inservice training of school administrators, staff personnel, and teachers. The book focuses on…

Although effective schools research has indicated the need for an added emphasis on increasing student achievement within a satisfying learning climate, the issue of how best to implement this research has been perplexing for both researchers and practitioners. Different approaches are being tried in two rural Saskatchewan school divisions. In…

Designing individual learning programs is the subject of this document, one of 9 modules within an 11-unit resource pack designed to help trainers and postsecondary and continuing education staff meet the needs of special needs students in Great Britain. Having completed the module, staff should be able to: (1) describe the learner-centered…