The National Workplace Literacy Program provides grants to partnerships of business, labor, and educational organizations to develop model programs for teaching job-related basic skills. These projects are yielding information about promising practices, effective program elements, and barriers to implementation. (SK)

Interviews with 15 participants in New Deal, a British training program for unemployed 18-24 year-olds, revealed overall skepticism about government training programs, distrust and disillusionment, little support for what the government identified as different about New Deal, and low expectations of long-term employment outcomes of the program.…

Discussions with women in rural areas of India analyzed government-initiated development programs regarding availability of information, suitability to women's needs, and perception of problems. Most programs were top down with little input form women; self-help approaches problematized the "self" and did not consider the realities of…

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 requires states to ensure that all students make adequate yearly progress in achieving proficiency in English language arts and math. This study examines how six diverse schools have responded to the challenge of educating their students in math, particularly students with disabilities and other…

The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), a strategic initiative founded by the Association of Research Libraries, is a catalyst for promoting a scholarly communication environment that is more open, financially tenable, and supportive of the current research and information needs of academe. Established in response to…

Since the 1990s, the federal government required public state universities in Mexico to recruit full time faculty members with doctoral degrees and research productivity to increase the academic competitiveness of higher education. After two decades of the implementation of federal mandates, public state universities have not improved their…

As the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation chronicled in its last year's Fordham Sponsorship Accountability Report, "Seeking Quality in the Face of Adversity", the 2008-09 school year was a brutal one during which schools, and their peers, faced many existential threats. The 2009-10 school year was Fordham's fifth year as a charter school…

How good does an early childhood program have to be in order to achieve school readiness outcomes for children? This is known as the "threshold question," and policy makers and others have wanted an answer to this question since the onset of public investments in early care and education (ECE) programs. With expansion of Head Start and…

This article explores the sociopolitical context of education policy, particularly as it relates to Latina/o education. The authors highlight the status of Latinas/os within the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to examine the impact of education policy designed to benefit few and disenfranchise most. They draw attention to the injustices of Latinas/os…

In this paper we examine the research literature on teacher performance pay. Evidence clearly suggests an upsurge of interest in many states and school districts; however, expanded use of performance pay has been controversial. We briefly review the history of teacher pay policy in the U.S. and earlier cycles of interest in merit or…

The four programmatic school-to-work transition models being developed and implemented by Youthwork, Inc. are assessed. The thrust is both to distinguish these strategies, one from another, and to clarify the variations that occur within each of these four models: academic credit for work experience, expanded private sector involvement, career…

The emphasis on achieving sex equity, begun under the Education Amendments of 1976, continues and expands with the Carl D. Perkins Vocational Education Act. As in the 1976 amendments, the states are required to assign one person full-time responsibility for fulfilling mandated functions relative to sex equity. However, the new Act provides the…

In September of 1958, the 85th Congress passed Public Law 85-864, the National Defense Education Act. The step had not been taken lightly. For months congressional committees had been studying alternative bills. Widespread discussion had occurred in circles where educators and the educated were represented. Many proposals had been examined and…

In 2001, President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in an effort to improve the quality of education for all students and to ensure that students of disadvantaged circumstances were not unnoticed. School administrators in Mississippi are seeking ways to meet the requirements of NCLB and to increase the number of successful…

The authors of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB 107-110) Act of 2001 anticipated that a majority of school districts or schools would not be able to attain state and national achievement standards without assistance. Consequently, the Act created a major tenet known as Supplemental Educational Services (SES) programs to improve the learning outcomes…