This evaluation documents the progress made by the Paseo Academy of Fine and Performing Arts Magnet High School (Kansas City, Missouri) during its second year of implementing the arts theme. The evaluation covers four primary areas: demographic data, implementation, perceptions, and achievement. With the entering class of ninth graders during…

This ethnographic study describes the relationships involved in the Partnership for Family Reading, a collaborative project between Montclair State College and a low-income urban school district to promote parent involvement in children's literacy development. Participant observation and other ethnographic research methods were used to produce…

Maryland is one of the states which recently developed new requirements for high school graduation. A preliminary evaluation of these new state standards has raised a number of issues about graduation standards and their assessment. The Maryland State Department of Education examined statewide policies and guidelines for high schools between 1982…

This paper focuses on local (school district level) facilitators, or individuals with major responsibility for implementing federal or state-sponsored school improvement practices. It covers who they are, what roles they play, and how they contribute to various outcomes. The sample is from the Study of Dissemination Efforts Supporting School…

Two separate sets of minimum standards designed to guide the evaluation of bilingual projects are proposed. The first set relates to the process in which the evaluation activities are conducted. They include: validity of assessment procedures, validity and reliability of evaluation instruments, representativeness of findings, use of procedures for…

This report assesses the effectiveness of the Napa County (California) Instructional Skills Staff Development Program, focusing on its impact on student achievement and student engaged rate in classrooms. The program, providing training for teachers and principals in administrative and instructional skills, is examined for outcomes in two schools,…

The future of computers in education and the research needed to realize the computer's potential are discussed in this report, which presents a summary and the conclusions from an invitational conference involving 40 computer scientists, psychologists, educational researchers, teachers, school administrators, and parents. The summary stresses the…

This case study was undertaken in order to discover if there are different types of policy language, and, if so, to describe relationships betweeen policy language types and policy implementation. Content analysis of three drafts of the state educational policy, "Standards for Approving Vermont's Public Schools," demonstrated the…

This ongoing project, conducted in four municipalities in Sweden, is investigating the ways in which schools and teaching are affected by various local communities and the ways in which central directives are transformed into a local educational reality. A diverse range of data have been collected, including demographic data from the…

The practice profile is a standardized, systematic, cost-effective tool for summarizing the components and requirements of a program in a manner that permits comparison with other programs or selection of discrete components from various programs. It provides a component checklist, a precise list of implementation requirements, and a system for…

The way that planning tools can be used to evaluate the economic consequences of implementing new academic programs at Grambling State University (GSU) is considered. The focus is projecting cost behavior for planning and decision making. The following planning tools are examined: cost-volume-revenue analysis, cost behavior analysis and least…

Presents case study of an inservice training package designed to prepare teachers to implement proposed changes. Developed for an English as a second language (ELS) program for adult francophones, this package consists of workshops and materials which view implementing change as a learning process for teachers as well as students. (Author/LRW)

Reviews the research on the effectiveness of five thinking skills training programs: Instrumental Enrichment, Philosophy for Children, Structure-of-Intellect (SOI), Problem Solving and Comprehension: A Short Course in Analytical Reasoning, and Odyssey. Compares and contrasts the content of each program and describes the relative lack of adequate…

This document presents a brief overview of conflict resolution in school settings and defines conflict resolution as: (1) a constructive approach to interpersonal and intergroup conflicts that helps people with opposing positions work together to arrive at mutually acceptable compromise solutions; and (2) as the body of knowledge and practice…

The Renewed Primary School project in Belgium is analyzed in this paper in terms of organizational response to a large-scale innovation, which is characterized by its multidimensionality, by the large number of participating schools, and by a complex support structure. Section 2 of the report presents an elaborated description of these…