This collaborative inquiry brings together data from a three-year period to understand how a charismatic principal and an innovative teacher educator united to develop teacher leadership and renew a low performing, high-needs, urban school. The results show improvement in teacher leadership, school culture, and student achievement. The study shows…

This paper is one in a series of four describing a boy-oriented program for elementary school children. It describes a "boy-oriented" classroom, playground, and extracurricular activities; a staff-development program; and development of a "boy-oriented" program package for dissemination purposes. It presents an evaluation of the program showing…

Commonality analysis was used as part of an evaluation of the Preparation through Responsive Educational Programs (PREP), a project based on behavior modification for disruptive, poorly achieving, and potentially delinquent urban junior high school students. The objectives of this study were to understand how the program affected certain academic…

The Reading Recovery Program, designed to help low-achieving first graders learn to use effective reading strategies, was fully implemented in the Durham, North Carolina, public schools in the 1994-1995 school year. An evaluation was conducted to assess the effects of the program over time through the achievement of students in the 1994-1995…

Reading Recovery (RR) is an early intervention program that provides intensive one-on-one services for first-grade students who experience difficulty in learning to read. RR teachers provide daily individualized lessons for 30 minutes until children are able to perform within the average range for their peers. RR was initiated in the Wake County…

The Michigan Department of Education implemented a large-scale social action program through its Compensatory Education School Aid Act of SY 1971-72. Schools received $200 per pupil and were held accountable for pupil achievement. This paper describes the educational delivery systems in three urban schools, the evaluation of pupil achievement, and…

In 1995 the Rowland Unified School District (California) developed a new mission statement defining core values for the district's preparation for the 21st century. The district then set about implementing a new accountability system with existing measures to establish baseline data for measuring progress toward the new goals. The focus in this…

This report summarizes research supports addressing three areas as targets for educational improvement in Alabama: beginning reading, expansion of reading power, and intensive intervention for those who are reading below grade level. The paper also describes Alabama's statewide initiative to implement best practices in these areas and summarizes…

In the Head Start Public School Transition Demonstration Project, 32 demonstration sites across the country have extended Head Start-like services to help low-income children transition smoothly into the elementary grades. Preliminary evaluation of a demonstration program in two West Virginia counties suggested that Head Start students receiving…

The Success for All (SAF) program was designed as a K-3 preventative and intensive intervention for students at risk of failing to learn to read for the purpose of bringing every student to grade level in reading by third grade. Key program elements include individualized tutoring, regrouping across grades into homogeneous reading classes, smaller…

A follow-up study was conducted of summer school programs in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which provided remedial instruction for 378 elementary school students two or more grade levels deficient in reading and/or mathematics achievement. Priority was given to Title I students. Major program elements included small teacher/pupil ratio; relaxed atmosphere;…

The aim of this paper is to identify the mechanisms that relate participation in programs established by Chapter 1 of the Education Consolidation and Improvement Act of 1981 to student achievement. It focuses on what happens to students in Chapter 1 programs and how their experiences affect their growth in academic achievement. The paper begins…

A study investigated the effectiveness of a program to improve the reading/vocabulary skills of an ability-grouped fifth grade class of "low achievers" (N=15) through the implementation of a literature-based whole language approach. Students were read aloud to from quality children's literature. From these books, spelling and vocabulary…

This report evaluates an "effective schools" intervention project, the purpose of which was to improve achievement on proficiency tests in selected Knoxville City Schools (KCS). Six target schools, predominantly serving Knoxville's impoverished areas as identified by Chapter I and census data, were selected to work toward improving…

Two alternatives to retention in grade for secondary school students were evaluated in Austin (Texas). Both were designed to allow students who are potential retainees (PRs) to receive remediation in one semester. The Transitional Academic Program (TAP) allows PRs to enroll in ninth-grade courses while repeating eighth-grade courses they had…