"Measure, Use, Improve! Data Use in Out-of-School Time" shares the experience and wisdom from a broad cross-section of out-of-school time professionals, ranging from internal evaluators, to funders, to researchers, to policy advocates. Key themes of the volume include building support for learning and evaluation within out-of-school time…

Challenges that face the academic research enterprise are numerous. These concerns include, but are not limited to: declines in extramural funding for investigatorinitiated research, an aging faculty workforce (the average age of securing a faculty's first R01 is over 42), insufficient funds to support faculty laboratories, and limited access to…

June Pierce Youatt, Wyl McCully, and Sue A. Blanshan describe an innovative, collaborative approach to making on-campus life more accessible to students at Michigan State University.

Home visiting is one tool used to prevent child abuse and improve child well-being by providing education and services in families' homes through parent education and connection to community resources. This toolkit provides state policymakers and advocates with strategies for extending and expanding access to state- or federally-funded home…

Virtually every school district in the country is dealing with the need to reduce their budget. The process used to make those decisions varies from state to state but almost always includes a combination of short and long-term approaches. In many school districts the emphasis is on reducing individual budget line items and not filling vacant…

The University of Michigan is almost always in the midst of a building boom. Year in and year out, Michigan has one of the most active programs of building renovation and new construction of all American universities. This program is very carefully managed to ensure that substantial architectural design work is not undertaken until there is a…

In January 2006, the College of Business at Eastern Michigan University (EMU) instituted a cross-disciplinary program in international business (IB). Business communication is a major component of the program. Moreover, the need for business communication in other languages contributed greatly to the cross-disciplinary nature of the program. This…

For those concerned with school improvement, resource-oriented mechanisms are a critical facet of efforts to transform and restructure daily operations. Resource-oriented organizational mechanisms focus specifically on ensuring the appropriate use of existing resources and enhancing efforts to address barriers to student learning. This report…

This newsletter issue asserts that sound, effective relationships in which diverse groups of people and organizations work together toward a common goal are the basis of the collaborative efforts in education that can accomplish change. The first article, "Partners: Forging Strong Relationships" (Sarah E. Torian), briefly describes the…

This publication describes the Midwestern Higher Education Commission and its programs, lists its commissioners and reproduces the compact that established it. A description of the commission notes that its member states are Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, and Wisconsin; and that it is an instrument of the…

A PLANNED APPROACH TO EDUCATIONAL CHANGE FOCUSES UPON THE INTERNAL FUNCTIONING OF THE SCHOOL SYSTEM. RESEARCH GENERALIZATIONS INDICATING CONDITIONS WHICH INFLUENCE LEARNING ARE CITED AS A BASIS FOR A CONCEPTUAL MODEL. FROM THIS MODEL, SOME ORGANIZATIONAL FUNCTIONS WHICH NEED TO BE DEVELOPED WITHIN THE SCHOOL SYSTEM ARE DERIVED. FIVE LEVELS OF…

This study addresses several common shortcomings of current university campus sustainability initiatives, including a lack of attention to integrative issues such as land use, housing, and transportation, and a generally reactive rather than proactive approach to sustainability. To engage these concerns, we develop a model for assessing the…

Michigan's state plan for developmental disabilities (DD) for October 1, 1994 to September 30, 1997 is presented. This plan includes descriptions of programs and services, eligibility criteria, information on the extent of services, and a statement on the effectiveness of the programs/services. Information on services is provided for the following…

This bulletin addresses the issue of improving interagency cooperation between the school and the court for the purpose of coordinating their efforts to reduce violence and vandalism within the school and the community. The experiences of Berrien County (Michigan) are used to illustrate the process of assessing, formalizing, and maintaining…

Questionnaires were sent to 307 persons, with 135 responses returned (40%), to determine who had used the Michigan Consumer Education Center services and to determine attitudes toward Center services. Five categories of persons were contacted: Those local representatives who had coordinated inservice training sessions provided by the Center; 1973…