This guide aims to support state education agencies and early education partners develop coherent, research-based policy by guiding thinking, discussion, data collection, and gap analyses of current practices and policies that can lead to more intentional decision making relative to young Dual Language Learners (DLL) and English Learners (EL).…

This report, intended for local and state policy makers and practitioners, summarizes the findings and implications of class-size reduction (CSR) in California. The report's findings provide a comprehensive picture of California's CSR initiative during its first 2 years, covering such topics as implementation, resources, teacher qualifications,…

The National Consortium on Testing undertook a case study of South Carolina's competency testing program. The Basic Skills Assessment Act (BSAA) passed in 1978 provided for the Basic Skills Assessment Program (BSAP). This program seemed a progressive approach because it is keyed to particular educational objectives. It is being implemented…

Discusses the status of environmental education at the primary level in Sudan, reviews the objectives, content, methodology, and evaluation strategies of an environmental education program that was implemented with primary age students. Reports that pupil improvement in scholastic achievement and behavior followed after participation in the…

Designed to accompany a slide series called "Understanding Your Grade 3 California Assessment Program (CAP) Report," this package is the second in a series that has been produced in conjunction with the new third grade test. The slide series describes the contents of the Survey of Basic Skills report that contains respective school's…

Smaller class sizes in California were viewed as a way to improve K-3 education, especially in the area of literacy. The urgency to act prompted state leaders to adopt class-size reduction (CSR) without knowing for sure that it would work and without establishing a formal procedure for evaluating the program. This report looks at past research on…

The evaluation by Abt Associates, Inc., of the Follow Through program, an extension of Head Start designed to improve primary education for disadvantaged children, created a controversy about the program and its assessment, which is discussed in this article. The authors see serious flaws in the evaluation design and interpretation. (MF)

This book presents an organizational model for reading program development. Following an overview of the program-planning/needs-assessment design, two sections of the book explain the step-by-step procedures of the model, focusing first on program planning, then on needs assessment. The section on program planning discusses ways of identifying and…

In 1986-87, the Writing to Read (WTR) program was piloted in kindergarten classes of four elementary schools in Tampa, Florida. Under the direction of their teachers and the WTR aide, kindergartners worked in the WTR laboratory for 1 hour per day. Students moved through the five-station laboratory where they learned and practiced phonetic,…

With class-size reduction (CSR) in California now a reality, some early evaluations of the program are now possible. A contribution to this early assessment is offered here. The paper describes teachers' and parents' renewed confidence in public education despite the challenges presented by the logistics of implementing the program in the nation's…

Curriculum mapping activities can be useful in analyzing curriculum goals and planning curriculum revision. This document is specifically designed using the Science Education Curriculum Goals articulated by the State of Oregon for grade 3. The goal areas include concepts, processing, manipulative skills, interests, values, interactions and…

Intended to provide the Portland Public Schools Curriculum Department documentation of the second-year kindergarten implementation and to provide kindergarten teachers data to support the development of a readiness continuum and placement criteria, this report furnishes a detailed explanation and survey of the Writing to Read program, an…

Following a discussion of contrasts between developed and developing countries, this paper describes problems encountered by the Universal Primary Education program, a project in Nigeria designed to promote literacy and eradicate superstititon and ignorance. Specifically, the following problems are described in the light of rural, traditional…

A 3-year pilot bilingual program based on the Manitoba curriculum was evaluated to determine the degree to which program objectives had been achieved. The program uses Ukrainian as the language of instruction for 100% of the time in kindergarten and for 50% of the time in grades 1 and 2. The study investigated the following: (1) the extent to…

This paper presents a discussion of issues raised in the evaluation of Project Follow Through reported by Abt Associates. The paper suggests that many of the problems inherent in the design of both the program and the evaluation stem from the underlying assumption that one educational model could be found which would best alleviate the educational…