In response to the need for greater racial and ethnic diversity, the Office of Academic Affairs (OAA) at Indiana University Indianapolis introduced a mandatory equity and inclusion-centered training program for faculty search committees in August 2023. This training addresses key challenges in achieving faculty diversity, including biases, narrow…

The University of Minnesota Extension Center for Youth Development made an organizational decision in 2011 to invest in a system-wide approach to implement youth program quality into the 4-H program using the Youth Program Quality Assessment (YPQA) tool. This article describes the four key components to the Minnesota Youth Program Quality…

Teachers often start a new school year working extremely hard to reteach last year's content, particularly for their lower income students. According to "Making Summer Count," a report commissioned by The Wallace Foundation and written by researchers at Rand, rigorous studies of voluntary summer programs, mandatory summer programs, and…

Afterschool and competency-based learning are increasingly emerging as student-centered, supportive learning models to prepare students for college and career. This white paper explores the intersection and relationship between these two fields, recommends ideal policy environments for implementing successful programs, provides real-world…

The project "Multimedia in science teaching: five years of research and teaching in Portugal" was successful in featuring the national research on multimedia in science education and in providing the community with a simple reference tool--a repository of open access scientific texts. The current work aims to describe the theoretical…

In 2011, the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE) and the City Council's Middle School Taskforce launched the Middle School Quality Initiative (MSQI) as an instructional intervention for improving literacy levels in the lowest performing middle schools in New York City. The initiative grew rapidly and now serves over 100 schools and…

This report examines traditional calendar school Read to Achieve reading camps implemented in the summer of 2014. Teacher and student survey respondents reported positive reading camp experiences and reading camp was well attended. Based on data for 502 students, a small percentage (16.1%) reached reading proficiency by the end of camp. Gains in…

The high demand for scientists and engineers in the workforce means that there is a continuing need for more strategies to increase student completion in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors. The challenge lies in finding and enacting effective strategies to increase students' completion of STEM degrees and in recruiting…

This chapter outlines the birth and growth of a veterans' program in Salt Lake City, Utah, and discusses next steps in spurring additional innovations and advancements to improve service for student veterans in community colleges.

Transition services can be used to forge family, school, and community partnerships and foster a successful shift to adult life for students with intellectual disabilities (ID). School psychologists can play a valuable additive role in supporting the transition process due to their graduate training in interpersonal skills; consultation services;…

To address the needs and interests of primary stakeholders in a writing program, this article presents a model of "grassroots" assessment that involves instructors from all ranks as well as students in the development, facilitation, and interpretation of assessment results. The authors describe two assessment plans that measured student…

Between 2012 and 2016, the Learning Metrics Task Force (LMTF) laid out an ambitious agenda for nations and the international community on how to define and measure learning in the context of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This report describes the process undertaken by a group of 15 "Learning…

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools' (CMS) Parent University is an innovative, collaborative initiative designed to engage parents in their children's education. Working with community partners, Parent University offers unique courses and workshops such as Parenting Awareness, Helping Your Child Learn in the 21st Century, Health and Wellness, and…

This paper argues that the dynamic model of educational effectiveness can be used to establish stronger links between educational effectiveness research (EER) and school improvement. It provides research evidence to support the validity of the model. Thus, the importance of using the dynamic model to establish an evidence-based and theory-driven…

What does it take to transform a large, bureaucratic institution with a fractured culture and a compliance orientation into a nurturing, collaborative, vision-directed organization? This report and the accompanying research brief endeavor to answer that question by examining a humanistic and systems thinking approach to cultural change that took…