The transition to kindergarten is an important time in the young life of a preschooler. Research has shown that the quality of children's kindergarten transition processes has implications for their future academic and social outcomes, and the level of family engagement in kindergarten. Research further indicates that children living in families…

Coaching is an individualized approach to professional development where educators work towards specific teaching goals with support and feedback from a designated colleague or expert. Coaching appears to be increasingly common in early childhood education (ECE) classrooms, and a number of local, state, and federal policy initiatives over the past…

Response to intervention (RTI) can be both a system for providing early interventions to struggling students and a special education diagnostic tool for evaluating and identifying students with specific learning disabilities. Contributing to the very limited literature on state-level approaches, this report describes how nine states define and…

Article examines two alternative approaches to TPE as it has been operated at the state level within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. (Author)

Community coalitions (CCs) have labored with some difficulty to demonstrate empirical evidence of effectiveness in preventing a wide range of adolescent problem behaviors. Training and technical assistance (TA) have been identified as important elements in promoting improved functioning of CCs. A reliable, valid, and inexpensive method to assess…

The book describes Pennsylvania's approach for determining placement of handicapped students in the least restrictive environment (LRE), as mandated by P.L. 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act. Separate sections address the following two topics (subtopics in parentheses): the LRE decision process (content for the decision…

The Pennsylvania Training Model's Educational Planning System for teaching the severely/profoundly handicapped is described. (Author)

The preliminary draft of a formal program evaluation model for special education operations in Pennsylvania is presented. Beginning chapters provide a review of literature on norm-referenced measurement, an illustration of formal and informal program evaluation in a learning disabilities context, descriptions of general implementation strategies…

This final report of the Pennsylvania Research Coordinating Unit for Vocational Education (RCU) summarizes activities during the period from August 1966 to August 31, 1969. Major activities and accomplishments of the RCU include program initiation, development of research and related activities, ancillary research and related projects, the…

The Instructional Support Team (IST) process is an intensive building-based pre-referral intervention program using teams of teachers and other school professionals to assist elementary students experiencing difficulty in the classroom. This trainer's manual presents a model workshop for training principals. The workshop's goals are to: (1)…

The document reports on a study to design a model to meet the impact of the Pennsylvania Right to Education Consent Decree (particularly as it relates to the mentally retarded) through the following steps--a review of the literature, a review of existing information, a survey to determine the amount of impact in selected areas, and construction of…

A project provided more than 800 adult educators in Pennsylvania with a wide range of staff development activities and instructional strategies for teaching students with learning differences and multilevel abilities in the same classroom. It established a model for staff development that built upon previous projects and used a variety of delivery…

The document features two articles on school reform in Pennsylvania. Part one discusses the Instruction Support Team (IST) (Kovaleski, Tucker, and Duffy). The IST process is an intensive building-based pre-referral intervention program to assist elementary students experiencing difficulty in the classroom. The IST is a working group of teachers…

The goal of this workshop for school psychologists is to provide high quality training in best practices for instructional evaluation. An objective of these trainings is to facilitate the implementation of the instructional evaluation requirement of the Special Education Regulations and Standards for determining eligibility for special education…

This workshop manual focuses on validation procedures designed to foster program improvement rather than compliance monitoring. The manual is in eight chapters. Chapter 1 looks at the elements to be evaluated--organization and management, training, student assessment, design and implementation of classroom interventions, team work, screening a…