High-quality care in the earliest years of life has been shown to relate to positive developmental outcomes for children, including improved early academic skills, social-emotional competencies, and cognitive functioning. Unfortunately, the early care experiences of many children are not always high quality; rather, research suggests that…

This description of the Erie Basic Educational Skills (BES) Program provides examples of the achievements made by the Erie Public Schools and Head Start toward BES and Responsive Educational Program goals. Staff positions, staff responsibilities, the curriculum, and programs initiated and carried out in the Erie Public Schools are described. The…

This final report describes a staff development project designed to provide for the effective and statewide dissemination of significant current or previous Section 353 special demonstration projects in Pennsylvania. A panel of 8 literacy experts reviewed 65 special projects funded by the Pennsylvania Department of Education's Bureau of Adult…

Five inservice workshops for coordinators and teachers of practical nursing were conducted to provide a coordinated approach to curriculum development and to the teaching of practical nursing throughout the state of Pennsylvania. In addition to providing up-to-date information on curriculum development, design, and revision, topics such as…

Since vocational education leaders will require many more and different skills in the future, this project was conducted to develop and implement a relevant and responsive field-centered, competency-based certification program for vocational administrative directors in Pennsylvania's western region. To this end, the following objectives were…

This paper surveys some of the teaching methods, learning activities, and programs either proposed or already used by some Pennsylvania schools to improve their students' performance on the Educational Quality Assessment. The assessment, mandated by Pennsylvania statute, measures student achievement in ten goal areas, such as self-esteem, verbal…

This final program performance report contains an eight-page narrative and supplementary materials from a competency-based vocational education (CBVE) staff development project. The narrative reports the project whose purpose was to promote curriculum-improvement activities as identified by teachers through a self-evaluation process with the end…

Progress toward four stated objectives in a K-12 career education project was determined after examining the field testing results of students, interviews, and data analysis. Satisfactory progress was made toward objective 1: revising, expanding, and refining two computer retrieval career education units. On a developer questionnaire teachers…

A study was conducted to determine the state of the art in vocational education programming for disadvantaged in Pennsylvania and the nation, and to develop materials to improve vocational programs for the disadvantaged. Project efforts focused on programs serving the academically/economically disadvantaged in regular classes, special classes, and…