This issue of EPP Monitor contains the following articles: "Countdown for Justice," Five Quick and Inexpensive Ways to End Overcrowding," "Third Grade Retention -- Deja Vu All Over Again," High-Need African-American and Latino Students Doing Better in Suburban Districts," "An Emerging Consensus on Facts, not…

This step-by-step guide helps communities think and talk about school renewal through innovative planning and design, and high quality construction. It begins with an overview of need and available funding, then describes potential members of a school-improvement team. These include: architects, state school agents, community groups, local elected…

Conclusions reached by the Illinois State Board of Education Study, released in May 1985, that small schools are inferior and inefficient, that Illinois has too many schools, and that over half its schools should be closed seem to be an educational step backward. Without linking the two concepts, the study implies that school consolidation will…

Drawing on information from 15 sources, this literature review discusses advantages/disadvantages of small schools and summarizes practices for both rural and urban small schools to follow to maintain educational quality despite dwindling enrollments and resources. Small school disadvantages in the areas of staff, instructional program, and…

Quite often, the people responsible for spending school facility dollars have little information with which to make wise investment choices. The process is typically driven by vendors, consultants, and public opinion. The result is that the schools become a poorly performing component of the education process. This document was developed to…

Small/rural community colleges should be integral parts of the communities they serve, catalysts for community development, and adaptable to community change. Collaboration with community agencies to develop efficient needs-specific programs and to use community residents as resources offer ways for colleges to provide educational courses and…

Student achievement, cost, rural context, and qualitative differences relative to small/rural schools were analyzed in Alberta to address the choice between small elementary school construction and school consolidation with student busing. Studies in both the United States and Canada have found no consistant significant differences in student…

Justification for school district consolidation is made on the basis of either reducing cost or increasing educational quality. Some cost reduction may be realized through certain economies of scale in some consolidations but it is by no means automatic. The Illinois State Board of Education emphasizes the relationship between high school size and…

This is the second annual report on the Pittsburgh School District by the Pittsburgh Council on Public Education. The report presents data on the following issues: school environment (school and class size, student and teacher absences, suspensions and assaults, and school satisfaction survey highlights); student achievement (New Standards Exams,…