The Des Moines (Iowa) Plan for Student Success provides an academic program for about 6,500 students having difficulty in reading/writing and/or mathematics in K-12. The Plan is a comprehensive kindergarten through grade 12 program with five components: (1) a Kindergarten Enrichment Program; (2) the Reading Recovery Program; (3) the…

The goal of the district assessment program of the Des Moines (Iowa) school district is to provide information which improves teaching and increases learning. Students participate in a number of assessment activities, including norm-referenced, standardized tests, college entrance examinations, Advanced Placement Tests, the district's…

Teachers, administrators, volunteers, and students involved in Adult Basic Education/English-as-a-Second-Language (ABE/ESL) programs in Washington were interviewed regarding their perceptions of assessment and their assessment needs. The primary objective of the study was to gather information that could be used in developing an assessment model…

Project Creating a New Approach to Learning (CANAL) was established under the agreement between the United States and the Chicago (Illinois) Board of Education to relieve the effects of segregation in Chicago schools. This report summarizes the participation of CANAL schools in training activities offered by Project CANAL from February 2 through…

This document reports the proceedings of a conference on early childhood and family research sponsored by the Administration on Children, Youth and Families (ACYF). Presentations at the conference consisted of reports of research, literature reviews, descriptions of projects funded by ACYF, and commentaries on research and practice in Head Start.…

A multi-year program, Project Homeroom, designed to introduce home-based computing to a select group of high school teachers, students, and their parents was recently conducted in three Chicago-area (Illinois) schools. The Technological Innovations in Educational Research Laboratory at Illinois State University (Normal) evaluated this program.…

First-year outcomes of a project called Involving Minority Parents of At-risk Children (IMPAC), a parent-school partnership implemented at the Carrington Middle School in Durham, North Carolina, are described in this paper. Begun during the 1991-92 school year, the program serves a predominantly African American population. Processes and…

The Appalachian Regional Commission/International Business Machine Writing to Read (WTR) program was implemented over a 3-year period in 55 selected rural schools of Appalachia. WTR is a computer-based instructional system designed to develop the writing and reading skills of kindergarten and first-grade students in a lab setting. Project schools…

In spring 1993, as part of the program review process at William Rainey Harper College (WRHC) in Palatine, Illinois, surveys were sent to former students in the college's Secretarial Science programs who had attended WRHC during the previous five years. Surveys were sent to 102 executive secretaries (ES's), 57 legal secretaries (LS's), 200…

Success for All (SFA), a schoolwide research-based reform model developed by Robert Slavin and his associates at Johns Hopkins University, is based on the premise that all students can and must succeed in the early grades. The program targets students in the lower grades, providing them with intensive instruction in language arts. This effort is…

This report summarizes portions of a much longer report entitled "Improving Society for Language-Minority Children: A Research Agenda," published in 1997. Eleven experts reviewed and discussed existing research relevant to the education of English-language learners and bilingual students and made recommendations for future research. Following an…

Despite a strong and persistent interest in fathers and concern about their absence in children's lives, there is little information on the complex ways fathers make contributions to their families and children. Six major topic areas were covered by panels of experts during the conference: (1) economic, sociological, psychological, and…

Seven case illustrations of affirmative action (AFA) programs are presented. Increases in the numbers of women and minority students at professional schools have been reported, but disadvantaged populations still suffer underrepresentation. The literature indicates that effective AFA may be realized through: early identification programs and…

An evaluation was done of New York City Board of Education's Project, Guidance Oriented Acquisition of Learning Skills (Project GOALS) for 1989-90. The project, in the first year of a 3-year funding cycle, provided 340 students of limited English proficiency (LEP) from various ethnic backgrounds (including Asian, Hispanic, Eastern European, and…

The effectiveness of four technical assistance-oriented services/products of one regional educational laboratory was studied. The services/products studied included a thinking skills activities workbook for classroom teachers, a videotape for rural educators on exemplary software for developing the thinking skills of at-risk students, a research…