Researchers have noted that effective school leadership is essential to ensuring positive student and school outcomes. To achieve these outcomes, university preparation programs must adequately train and develop aspiring school leaders with the knowledge, skills, and capacity needed to be effective leaders. This qualitative case study examines a…

Collaboration is tough even in ideal circumstances. How do you begin to effect change when nearly half of the families in a district speak a language other than English in the home, but traditional education models rarely emphasize the strengths of cultural or linguistic diversity? Or when nearly all students live in low-income families and face…

This technical brief describes updates to a database of dropout prevention programs and policies in 2006/07 created by the Regional Education Laboratory (REL) Northeast and Islands and described in the Issues & Answers report, "Piloting a searchable database of dropout prevention programs in nine low-income urban school districts in the…

The current study replicates work of Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Northeast and Islands. It describes dropout prevention programs in nine Mid-Atlantic Region (Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) school districts serving communities with populations of 24,742-107,250 (as of July 2008). All nine…

The current study replicates work of Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Northeast and Islands. It describes dropout prevention programs in nine Mid-Atlantic Region (Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) school districts serving communities with populations of 24,742-107,250 (as of July 2008). All nine…

Civic-minded people in the National School Volunteer Program's 700 affiliates receive a warm welcome from students and teachers alike. (Editor)

One of the most misunderstood issues in pre-K-12 education today is how to educate children who are not yet proficient in English. When policymakers refer to these students as English language learners (ELLs)--as many school district officials presently do--or as limited English proficient students (LEPs)--as federal legislators did in the No…

Over the last 10 to 15 years, a variety of efforts to transform American high schools have gained both public and private support. Significant among these are initiatives to implement Small Learning Communities (SLCs), part of a larger school reform and restructuring effort designed to address a variety of goals, including "downsizing large…

Describes a small (305 students in K-12) school district in Iowa and its relationship to its community. (IRT)

Describes a program underway in the Salt Lake City School District to ensure governance and community involvement with the schools. (LD)

The symposium papers presented in this publication are based on a continuing program of research in ten rural school districts. The program, "Project Rural," is part of the Experimental Schools program, which emphasizes a holistic approach to educational change--one requiring simultaneous change in curriculum, staff development, community…

A description of the two major outcomes of Trenton's Title III project, "Building a Comprehensive Planning Capability Using EPPBS", is given. The author first briefly reviews the planning system which resulted from the project, entitled the System for Trenton's Educational Planning (STEP). Following this, a detailed overview of the other…

The System for Trenton's Educational Planning (STEP), a set of procedures for strategic planning, is described. The background to the project and the desired goals which led to STEP are reviewed, and the major components of the annual planning cycle, including assessment, base case planning, policy formulation, project design, simulation of…

The School Planning, Evaluation, and Communication System (SPECS) is an overall design for districtwide program assessment and development. It is both a way of interrelating planning and evaluation of individual programs and a way of comparing the outcomes of all district programs with the district's community-defined educational goals. Component…

The School Planning, Evaluation, and Communication System (SPECS) is an overall design for districtwide program assessment and development. It is both a way of interrelating planning and evaluation of individual programs and a way of comparing the outcomes of all district programs with the district's community-defined educational goals. This…