Southern Illinois University Edwardsville's multiple techniques for assessing its Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities program seek to address both bigpicture concerns (e.g., are students learning?) and more pragmatic questions (e.g., are there barriers to participation?). The benefits and challenges of the quantitative and qualitative…

Data-based instructional programs have proliferated in American schools despite limited evidence of their effectiveness in improving educator practice and raising student achievement. We report results from a two-year school-randomized evaluation of the Achievement Network (ANet), a program providing schools with standards-aligned interim…

The second annual implementation report for the Accelerating Opportunity (AO) initiative in four states finds that: (1) colleges aligned pathways and supports with local needs; (2) students were satisfied with AO; (3) AO instructors grew more adept at team teaching; (4) colleges struggled to recruit adult education students; (5) states and…

A number of academic, public, regional, and state libraries use WorldCat Local (WCL) as a resource location tool that enables users to search, find, and gain access to a range of print and electronic resources. This article describes a study undertaken to assess a Research I university's implementation of WCL. The study sought to understand the…

Enormous demands for online degrees in higher education have increased the pressure on universities to launch web courses and degrees quickly and, at times, without properly attending to the quality of these ventures. There is scarce research that defines which quality indicators are used to assess cyberlearning environments, how different…

The need for quality service-learning programs has increased according to greater interest in service-learning and civic engagement for academically gifted students. The Civic Leadership Institute (CLI), a 3-week residential program for gifted adolescents, is a service-learning program created to help academically talented students explore complex…

The American Association of Community Colleges' (AACC) Plus 50 Initiative is a three-year initiative launched in June 2008 and funded by The Atlantic Philanthropies. It was created to support a pilot group of two-year institutions to develop or expand campus programs that engage plus 50 learners. The initiative focuses on three types of…

Definitions are central to both the practice and the power of leadership. This deceptively simple supposition was the basis for an elective doctoral leadership seminar at Illinois State University designed and taught by Lyman in Fall 2005, and replicated by Gardner in Spring 2007. The authors featured the same texts and stimulated students'…

The American Association of Community Colleges' (AACC) Plus 50 Initiative is a three-year initiative launched in June 2008 and funded by The Atlantic Philanthropies. It was created to support a pilot group of two-year institutions to develop or expand campus programs that engage plus 50 learners. The initiative focuses on three types of…

The Career Education Workshops project began August 15, 1972 and was completed April 11, 1973. The primary purpose of the project was o conduct eight workshops which would be geographically distributed throughout Illinois on the basis of teacher population density, and would educate 240 or more elementary teachers concerning Illinois' three newly…

The satisfaction of 469 parents or guardians and 387 of their children who received mental health services at 22 community agencies in Illinois was assessed with standardized measures and procedures. Youths' satisfaction was less than that of their parents. Results are used to formulate a prediction model. (SLD)

To investigate the extent to which Illinois gainful home economics cooperative education programs have contributed to the employability of graduates, questionnaires were mailed to 1969 and 1970 graduates seeking current employment status, ratings on the contribution of the training to specific employment competencies, current employer's assessment…

This report argues that evidence exists for the case that the charter school movement is largely a failed reform. The report puts the charter school movement in the context of dissatisfaction with public schools and the public sector in general. It then describes the claims for charters made by the early charter school advocates, emphasizing the…

In March 1991, 3,081 fiscal year 1990 graduates of selected occupational programs in the Illinois Community College System (ICCS) were surveyed concerning their objectives for attending college, current educational status, present employment status, salary, employment start-up, geographic location of employment, and satisfaction with their…

The second year's activities of a fine arts educational program, funded under ESEA Title 3 and encompassing 184 schools in five central Illinois counties, are described and evaluated. The art activities evaluated are art demonstrations, art workshops, a materials resource center, adult programs, Saturday art centers, the Logan County Fine Arts…