A report recently released by the Center on Education Policy reveals that the four-year-old No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act has indeed served to shine a light on the importance of professional development for K-12 educators. Beyond that basic fact, though, any real broad-based impact on the training of educators remains inconclusive. While the…

This report examines the types of professional development necessary to implement successful online learning initiatives. The potential for schools utilizing online learning is tremendous: schools can develop new distribution methods to enable equity and access for all students, they can provide high quality content for all students and they can…

"Informed math self-placement," a program implemented at American River College in Sacramento, California, to determine students' readiness for college-level math, has been in place for three years. This case study describes the development and implementation of math self-placement at American River. Math self-placement consists of a…

Dynamic Online Performance Support Systems (DOPSS) are a new class of intervention that can meet the needs of a quickly changing work force in an information age environment. These systems are customized for the target population, with unique meta tags, unique function sets, and dynamic growth for and by users in use. These unique tag sets allow…

Equivalency programmes (EPs) refers to alternative education programmes that are equivalent to the formal education system in terms of curriculum and certification, policy support mechanisms, mode of delivery, staff training, and other support activities such as monitoring, evaluation and assessment. The development of EPs is potentially an…

The purpose of this publication is to identify the essential components of appropriate programming mandated by Alberta Education for students with special education needs, to provide examples of effective practices, to establish a common understanding of the terminology associated with this specialized field, and to clarify the meaning of…

It is time for reform advocates to expand their emphasis on improving instruction and school management to include a comprehensive component for addressing barriers to learning. In doing so, they must pursue this third component with the same level of priority they devote to the other two. That is, such an enabling (or learner support) component…

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to evaluate the diffusion of and user response to an information technology support system (ITSS) which was designed to facilitate inter-organisational coordination and collaboration in the professional development of officers employed by local authorities (LAs). Design/methodology/approach: An action…

Highly practical and accessible, this indispensable book provides clear-cut strategies for improving K-12 writing instruction. The contributors are leading authorities who demonstrate proven ways to teach different aspects of writing, with chapters on planning, revision, sentence construction, handwriting, spelling, and motivation. The use of the…

In the 1990s, the nation's educational focus turned to troubled schools in the nation's poorest cities. Under the leadership of Luther Williams, then Assistant Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Urban Systemic Initiative was created to improve the teaching and learning of science and mathematics. Recognizing that high-needs…

Group family day care providers need to create high-quality programs where children have opportunities to grow, learn and thrive. Part of providing high-quality child care includes complying with the group family day care regulations from the New York State Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS). This Handbook will help day care providers:…

English as a second language (ESL) programs in community colleges are as diverse in the models they follow as the students they serve. This volume provides a detailed look at how faculty and administrators are tailoring their ESL programs to best serve the needs of their students and the missions of their institutions. The authors of the thirteen…

This report is the second in a series of policy papers on the education of educators. It identifies several model teacher education programs, but also finds that the majority of the nation's teachers are prepared in programs that have low admission and graduation standards and cling to an outdated vision of teacher education. Both state…

National concern about the growing number of identified children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has increased efforts in the research field (National Research Council, 2001; Odom et al. 2003; Simpson, 2005) and the U.S. federal government (U.S. House of Representatives, 2005) to provide specific recommendations regarding appropriate…

This document presents the proceedings of the Annual Research Forum. Included herein are the following 29 studies: (1) What Factors Influence Algebra 1 Students' Attitudes toward Math? (Elizabeth A. Allen); (2) Low-Income Student and Teacher Impressions of Kagan Cooperative Learning (Andrea Anderson); (3) Developing and Implementing an Articulated…