There is growing public recognition that the most important route to educational improvement is through enhancing the skills and status of adults who work within the education system. The purpose of this document is to provide a resource to school personnel who are attempting to improve their professional development efforts; hence both sections…

The context of staff development programs should be selected from options promising substantial increases in student learning and aptitude. This article introduces the "effect size" concept and reviews recent research on teaching models (cooperative learning, information-processing models, synectics, nondirective teaching, and DISTAR). Includes 55…

Increasingly, principals are being viewed as instructional leaders, professional educators active in initiating and planning teacher development programs. While most principals consider instructional leadership a high priority, they spend much of their time solving routine problems and confronting minor crises. Immediate, short-term responses take…

This booklet aims to help educators make informed decisions about which students need special language services, what kind of services they should receive, and how well the students and the language program have succeeded. It focuses on the following issues: (1) how the larger social context affects teachers' decisions and students' success; (2)…

The Administrative Leadership Institute offered a Leadership Institute, Regional Group Meetings, and online support to administrators of adult basic and literacy education programs in Pennsylvania. The program was developed following a needs assessment that gathered information from administrators in the state. The Leadership Institute, held in…

Developed to assist individuals and institutions in the evaluation of staff development programs, this guide reviews strategies to determine desired program outcomes, to include evaluation in ongoing planning, and to implement evaluation results. Following an introductory review of societal and educational trends affecting community colleges, the…

This document presents recommendations of the Council of Administrators of Special Education (CASE) regarding the development of a future agenda for a unified (regular and special) educational system. Ten recommendations--five addressing policy and five addressing actions--are included, with a discussion of rationale and implications of each. The…

This report evaluates Project Data-Tech, a New York City program that served 125 Haitian- and Spanish-speaking students of limited English proficiency and that was designed to improve the educational attainment of these minority children. Participating students received instruction in English as a second language; native language arts (NLA); the…

This document outlines a comprehensive plan developed by the Minnesota State Department of Education for improving school effectiveness throughout the state. The first four sections of the paper present prefatory material, including a general introduction, current comparative statistics on Minnesota schools, need statements (state legislation…

This book is written primarily for special educators who offer resource and consultation support for students with mild handicaps and students at risk for school failure. Examples of consultation projects implemented and evaluated in the field are used to illustrate principles of effective consultation. Suggestions and guidelines are provided for…

This report examines the progress in 1992-93 of the Career Awareness Program for Bilingual Haitian and Hispanic Students (Project CAP) in New York City. In the year under review, Project CAP served a total of 292 students with limited English proficiency who were also limited in their ability to read and write in their native language.…

The National Forum on Effective Urban and Metropolitan Schooling met to discuss building communities and curriculum as part of a larger effort to support an agenda of achievement, competency, and success for urban education. This report of that 1989 meeting is divided into two parts. The first part lists and defines the following 10 themes for the…

Magnet school programs require careful planning. Originally designed to achieve voluntary desegregation, magnet programs attract students of all races and backgrounds by offering special curricular themes and instructional approaches not offered in neighborhood schools. Outcomes of a successful program include the following: (1) desegregation; (2)…

A four-step approach to implementing a training program and measuring results for government agencies was developed in response to an executive order to federal agencies to provide effective training and performance measures in their annual budgets. Step one is the analysis of established goals to identify training requirements. Suggested…

This document presents and examines Iowa's adult basic education (ABE) program benchmarks, which have been designed as criteria for evaluating the following aspects of the performance of ABE programs in Iowa's community colleges: educational gains; program planning; curriculum/instruction; staff development; support services; and…