The School Development Program (SDP), initiated 25 years ago by Dr. James Comer, is described, with focus on the need for knowledge about its child development component and the implications of this lack for program implementation and impact. The SDP program is recognized for its primary focus on child development and human relationships as its…

The Federal Government has sponsored job training for the unemployed and economically disadvantaged for more than three decades. The National Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) study is the first evaluation of a major ongoing national program that uses a random assignment experimental design in which only program experience divides participants…

This paper begins by describing the basic design and scope of Tennessee's Student Teacher Achievement Ratio (Project STAR), which began in 1985. The project was designed to determine the effect of reduced class size on the achievement and development of students in kindergarten through grade three. Findings that demonstrated that students in…

This study evaluated the Primary Learning Communities (PLC) program, a non-graded kindergarten through second-grade alternative curriculum piloted in three Houston, Texas, elementary schools. The curriculum allows a multi-age mixing of students with ages between five and seven years in the same classroom. Approximately 600 students and 27 teachers…

This training manual was written to assist in planning and implementing follow-up studies of secondary special education programs. The model presented is based on a longitudinal study conducted by the Vermont Department of Education and the University of Vermont, which collected information from previous students with and without handicapping…

A study investigated the instructional and curricular changes made in seven Mesa (Arizona) public elementary schools as a result of a 1989 state mandate for second language instruction at the elementary school level. In the schools under study, Spanish second language instruction is integrated into the core curriculum. The study examined…

This booklet discusses obstacles to effective drug education programs and suggests components that should be included in order to ensure effective programs. The first section presents six questions to ask of one's drug education program, noting that a poorly conceived program can do more harm than good. The second section focuses on convincing…

Staff development has been the focus of the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory's Rural Small Schools Initiative (RSSI) since it began in 1987. The research literature and RSSI's own survey of staff development practices in southwestern rural schools indicate that current staff development delivery systems are content rich and process…

The evaluations of substance abuse prevention programs have been criticized for being incomplete, for lacking a comprehensive approach, and for lacking a process evaluation component. Context factors have been found to have distinctive patterns among alcohol and other drug abusers. Among the variables of interest, family cohesion, family…

The work of the Program Effectiveness Panel (PEP) of the United States Department of Education was examined. The PEP is the Department of Education's primary means of certifying or validating the effectiveness of educational programs. Thirty-three educational programs were validated by the PEP between January 1988 and December 1990. Over time,…

This paper examines the problem of automatic explanation of reasoning, or the ability of a program to discuss what it is doing in some understandable way, particularly as part of an expert system. An introduction presents a general framework in which to view explanation and reviews some of the research in this area. This is followed by a…

The information on the establishment and management of a school microcomputer laboratory that is provided in this paper emphasizes ways in which use of the facility by students can be maximized, and is intended for use by other districts that have or are establishing computer labs in their buildings. The Lancaster (Ohio) City Schools serves as a…

This is a progress report for a project attempting to gather and share information about effective dropout prevention strategies in action at the middle school and high school levels around the Northwest region of the United States. Introductory material reviews current views of the dropout problem, recent reports which address the issue of…

This publication presents an overview of all educational programs approved for national dissemination by the Department of Education. The projects are divided into the following sections: (1) adult education; (2) administration/organizational arrangements; (3) alternative schools/programs/bilingual/migrant programs; (4) basic skills--language…

A group of 27 library administrators and library computer systems experts met to share their experiences and insights with regard to online catalogs, to review survey results from The Council on Library Resources (CLR) 1982 Online Catalog Study, to review draft documents on the costs and features of online catalogs, and to discuss and recommend…