This article discusses factors to consider as we evaluate the professional learning occurring in our schools. The article describes how a committee of six teachers and one administrator at Hershey Middle School in Pennsylvania's Derry Township School District adapted an activity for use in a two-hour professional learning session called "The…

The U.S. Department of Education believes it is important that all programs responsible for pre-service teacher training prepare all graduates to effectively select, evaluate, and use appropriate technologies and resources to create experiences that advance student engagement and learning. We call upon leaders of teacher preparation programs to…

States increasingly are incorporating Kindergarten Entry Assessments (KEAs) into their comprehensive assessment systems with the goal of helping educators identify gaps in children's competencies, target instruction to children's individual needs, engage parents to better support their child's learning, and identify needs for expanding and…

Wouldn't it be great if all your teachers were as good as your best? Teaching is often an isolated profession in which teachers work behind closed doors, doing their own thing. Peer coaching is a collaborative, ongoing process that can increase the effectiveness of all your teachers. This "Focus On" is designed to lead a faculty into the…

While inclusion is a legal mandate, most early childhood teacher preparation programs are not doing an adequate job of preparing students to teach and care for young children with disabilities. Even if changes were made today to teacher preparation programs, states would still have to play catch-up with the existing early childhood workforce. This…

The Arts in Special Education Project of Pennsylvania (ASE) works cooperatively with intermediate units to make arts inservice workshops and special events available at regional and local sites. Descriptions of ASE efforts in inservice, information, assistance and resource materials, and presentations are given along with a list of ASE…

Pennsylvania's Content Area Reading Program uses a network of 50 trained instructors to help teachers improve students' content area reading skills. This article covers program content, instructor recruitment and training, variations in program presentation, factors underlying program success, and steps in planning inservice programs in content…

The Right to Read program in Pennsylvania is outlined in this document. Included are a sketch of the program's history; a chart of the program with projections through 1980; lists of the objectives, participating districts, and the various personnel involved in the program; the schema; a statement concerning migrant education; and lists of…

This article describes development and delivery of Pennsylvania's Literary Braille Refresher Course, intended to both refresh literary Braille skills and teach instructional strategies to the 20 teachers enrolled. The article covers the course's goals and objectives, participants, structure, evaluation, and analysis of results. The course's…

A project was conducted to develop a summer institute for new (up to 2 years' experience) adult education teachers in Pennsylvania. During the first phase of the project, the institute was designed as a 3-day intensive training session consisting of 14 workshops (most presented twice), and teachers were recruited. The second phase of the project…

A project designed an operational system and develop a skilled pool of trainers, in conjunction with Pennsylvania's Regional Professional Development Centers (PDCs), to deliver high-quality, uniform training modules in needed content areas to adult basic and literacy education (ABLE) staff throughout Pennsylvania. Procedures for identifying,…

Approved under the Migratory Amendment to the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act's Title I, 10 educational programs, designed to allow flexibility in the placement of children as they progressed, were implemented in Pennsylvania during 1974. The 928 children participating in these migrant programs were identified and recruited by social…

The final report describes "Project Partners in Education", a Montgomery County (Pennsylvania) project, designed to create a corps of resource persons composed of parents and teachers who would be knowledgeable about the entire IEP (individualized educational plan) process; and to obtain data on the extent of actual IEP implementation on…

Project IMAGES (Improving Management of Adults/Guiding and Educating Staff) was conducted throughout Pennsylvania to provide two three-hour training sessions for the special needs of both experienced and inexperienced staff of adult basic education programs. Instruction was given in the counseling areas of age variance management and the…

As part of a statewide, structured diffusion plan, inservice training sessions were held for teachers and administrators from many local schools to encourage use of V-TECS (Vocational-Technical Education Consortium of States) competency-based curriculum materials in local schools. Use of other recommended vocational education resources was also…