Restorative Justice (RJ) models of diversion from the criminal justice system have been used successfully with adults and youth charged with minor offenses. Professionally mediated RJ conferences bring together the offender and the person(s) harmed to discuss the impact of their actions and develop a plan to restore community safety and make…

The FNS Research Corner provides a continuing series to summarize recently completed and current research conducted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) in the area of child nutrition. Summaries of recently completed research projects, research conducted through grant activities, and in-progress research are…

Today, English language learners (ELLs)--students whose primary language is other than English--are the fastest-growing major school population in the United States. Between 2000-01 and 2010-11, the number of these students, whose level of English proficiency is not sufficient to support learning in a regular English language classroom, rose 18…

Written to help local school systems more fully utilize community expertise in their career education programs, this guide discusses the following topics in a question/answer format: What is community involvement? What challenges must be overcome to gain effective community involvement? and How are community involvement activities developed and…

A model to serve rural (Kentucky) mentally retarded adults age 50 and over incorporates generic community resources such as residential, nutritional, medical, recreational, and transportation services with age appropriate activities and programs. The system is intended to provide an alternative to the life-long work setting of the workshop or work…

Intended to guide local high schools in the development of an orientation program for incoming freshmen, this booklet in a question/answer format presents the needs of such a program, the program goals, a step by step development plan, and a list of suggested resources. The guide also explains how to implement and evaluate the program and points…

Provided in this interim report is a summary of activities relating to the Pikeville, Kentucky career education project. With specific emphasis placed on career education for the elementary grades and on occupational placement for grades 7-12, the report provides information on: (1) Goals and Objectives, (2) Project Design and Procedures, (3)…

This article describes work on a new tool to help educators increase parental involvement in their schools using the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC). When the authors set out on their goal in rural Hart County, Kentucky, they discovered that no instrument existed to measure changes in the level of parental involvement. Using…

Describes a Kentucky program designed to train special-education personnel in moderate/severe-disabilities and early-childhood special education. The model used satellite, compressed video, and on-site delivery systems; support services from the university, state, and federal governments, and various methods of team teaching. Program effectiveness…

Volume I of this final report, an overview of Kentucky's multi-county Rural Child Care Project, describes the project's history, purposes, structure, and procedures in administering child-development, social-work and homemaking services. The day care program, which became a full-year Head Start program in 1967, is one aspect of the effort to…

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…

The mission of the Appalachian Rural Systemic Initiative (ARSI) was to build a long-term capacity that would improve the educational structures of the rural communities it served. The major strategy ARSI used to create improvement communities across Appalachia was to identify, embrace and educate individual teachers, who became ARSI Teacher…

In Kentucky, one of the six participating Appalachian Rural Systemic Initiative (ARSI) states, the Teacher Partner concept soon gave rise to the Regional Teacher Partners (RTPs). This complementary project, known as the "Master Teacher Project," was designed after the Teacher Partner model but with one key difference. This paper…

Many of the people who live in Knott County today are direct descendants of the early settlers of the region. Today the people of Knott County share an identity that is grounded in the place they and their ancestors called home. Perhaps the public endeavor in which the influence of place is most evident is education. In Knott County education has…