The Region 15 Comprehensive Center (R15CC) is federally funded to provide high-impact, customized, and responsive capacity-building technical assistance to state educational agencies (SEAs) in Arizona, California, Nevada, and Utah. In 2022, R15CC established a regional Family and Community Engagement (FACE) Collaborative for SEA leaders in…

Special education programs vary in the quality of services provided across states, cities, and school districts. There are three major components necessary for a quality special education program for children with complex learning needs. These components include systems level analysis, capacity building for staff, and strong individual student…

As researchers, decision-makers, and practitioners focus on continuous improvement in education, local-level change is gaining importance. Yet, many local school improvement efforts fail to be fully implemented. Even those that are fully implemented often fail to sustain improvements because the schools are embedded in systems that face multiple…

The aim of this study is to determine the needs of special education teachers about curriculum development, and to implement the constructivist approach to in-service training programme for special education teachers. Furthermore, this study seeks to evaluate the developed in-service training programme. The descriptive and experimental methods…

University early childhood programs attempt to balance a traditional tri-part mission: service to children and families; professional development of caregivers/teachers, clinicians, and researchers; and research on child development, learning, and/or education. Increasingly, infants receive care and education on university campuses, yet little is…

Museum leaders around the country are in the midst of examining and changing their business models in response to new economic realities. Museum educators have an opportunity to play a leading role in this endeavor. To do so educators must understand the relationship between money and mission. For too long there has been a belief that the…

School improvement might be initiated by state or district mandate, or it might be motivated by the concerns of school personnel. Teachers and administrators frequently enter the process with some idea of what needs to be reformed or improved, but issues can be overemphasized or overlooked if the process does not begin with a comprehensive needs…

Developing a clear idea of needs and objectives for any particular school system is the first step in planning for educational processes. (MB)

The Learning Transfer Systems Inventory provides a systematic approach for predicting training effectiveness through needs assessment, organizational analysis to determine issues affecting training outcomes, and assessment of needed resources. Data from 158 management trainers demonstrated its effectiveness in assessing how well an organization…

This is one of eight short monographs intended to aid practicing educators in planning and conducting accountability programs in schools. This booklet discusses the concept of educational accountability and examines the major facets of educational accountability programs. Short sections focus in turn on the nature of educational accountability,…

Explains and differentiates among several types of needs assessment, recommends one type, the external needs assessment, and presents the steps for implementing this and other types of needs assessments. (Author/CHC)

This article provides a flexible systems approach model for planning programs that includes seven steps: (1) assessing needs; (2) establishing priorities and responsibilities; (3) selecting goals and objectives; (4) allocating resources; (5) selecting teaching techniques; (6) evaluating outcomes; and (7) determining effectiveness. (JOW)

A needs assessment is a procedure or process that identifies the perceived or expressed needs of a school district. The process involves the use of various measurements and activities to obtain the data needed to define the gap between "what is" and "what should be." This handbook reviews four such processes or models for…

A guide for agencies in setting up new employee development programs or a tool for assessing existing ones, the paper presents an eight-step process for organizational training. Step 1 commences with the identification and ranking of learning needs, or conducting a needs assessment. Step 2, selection of learning objectives, includes a job analysis…

Teachers prefer that staff development be continuous, relevant, and integral to their jobs. A systems approach to staff development contains three basic components: planning, implementation, and evaluation. The proposed model emphasizes how interdependence of these components can be achieved through the use of feedback which facilitates system…