The University of North Texas's Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science began admitting students to its 2-year early college entrance science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) program in the fall of 1988. This program provided accelerated entry for top students in Texas in the areas of mathematics and science. Approximately 200…

For the past decade, MDRC has evaluated a number of interventions designed to improve the outcomes of community college students, including enhanced counseling, learning communities, and financial incentives. Encouragingly, many of these strategies have produced positive effects, affirming that changes in institutional practices and policies can…

Nationwide, personnel preparation programs are responding to the changing population demographics and its impact on Pre K-12 classrooms. Needs surveys conducted by the Monarch Center over the past ten years have consistently yielded a need for support in redesigning program course and fieldwork components to better prepare their teachers and other…

Over the past decade or so there has been increasing concern over the unprecedented wave of retirements of community college leaders, from department chairs all the way to presidents. There are three different venues for developing future leaders in order to offset this deficiency: university-based formal degrees, professional and continuing…

The preparation of culturally and linguistically responsive special educators requires planning, substantive collaboration, and valuing the perspectives of underrepresented groups. This article describes restructuring efforts of one special education preparation program that included coursework and field-based experiences designed to enhance…

The purpose of this research is to discuss development of the Logistical Tracking System (LTS)1 and evaluate the changes in processes and procedures at the University of Texas-Dallas (UT-Dallas) that were due to implementation of a new type of technology. The chapter elaborates on the positive and negative aspects of designing and constructing a…

The first section of this report recapitualizes the Texas Teacher Center Project in history. The broad goal of the project is to improve teacher education throughout the state of Texas but, for the purposes of this report, this long-range and generalized goal is categorized into four concrete objectives: (1) changing preservice education programs;…

For young people who have dropped out of school, are out of work, or lack connections to family or other caring adults, there are often no easy answers. Their hopes for a better life are frequently no different than those harbored by their more advantaged peers, but their path to adulthood is rendered more difficult by tangled combinations of…

This description of the development and evaluation of a model training curriculum is part of a series of three documents which together constitute a guide to the training of the Bilingual-Bicultural Child Development Associate (CDA) trainer. The introduction focuses on the objectives, background and philosophy of the Texas Bilingual-Bicultural CDA…