The Texas Afterschool Centers on Education is the program administered through the Texas Education Agency (TEA) for the federally funded 21st Century Community Learning Center (CCLC) grants. The Texas ACE Austin Cycle 9 program is composed of a compilation of activities at 10 AISD campuses that provide a comprehensive range of high quality and…

The purpose of this policy study was to report descriptive research on state-level policy and frameworks for accountability systems of alternative education in the United States. The six states; California, Colorado, Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, and North Carolina; identified in the 2010 Jobs for the Futures policy analysis of alternative education…

This supplemental report provides technical documentation for the full report (published separately) concerning the 63% of AISD's Class of 2013 graduates who enrolled in a postsecondary institution the year after high school, and 74% of Class of 2012 graduates persisted in college for a second year. [For the full report, see ED626498.]

The purpose of this study was to examine and compare key elements of the actions that states in the USA and Australia took to implement the Common Core State Standards or Phase One of the Australian Curriculum, and what processes and products they used to facilitate implementation of these innovations. A rubric adapted from a diagnostic tool,…

The purpose of this paper is to inform evaluators of a method of evaluating capacity building in educational programs. One definition of capacity building is helping an organization increase its ability to fulfill its mission (Wing, 2004). Evaluators of capacity-building efforts therefore must focus on evidence that the program has helped to build…

Increasing accountability and efficiency in the use of public and out-of-pocket financing in education are critical to realizing the maximum impact of the meager allocations to education in most developing countries. While broad estimates and numbers are routinely collected by most national ministries and state departments of education, the lack…

Accreditation can be seen as one of several complementary measures in a quality assurance system, and the starting point is the need to maintain and improve good quality in institutions of higher education. Accreditation can play a more or less dominant role in the field of different measures that aim at monitoring, steering, recognizing and…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate decision making in the Common Core State Standards Initiative as the change process moved from research, development and diffusion activities to adoption of the Common Core State Standards by the states. A decision-oriented evaluation model was used to describe the four stages of planning, structuring,…

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role state departments of education, a professional organization and a leading internet organization play in providing recommendations and guidelines in the construction of new high school libraries. Four state agencies were identified and specific square footage formulas noted as well as information…

Since 1992, the Chilean Ministry of Education is developing a sustained process to incorporate ICT (Information and Communications Technology) into schools by providing equipment and training to faculty members. Schools appoint one of their teachers as a coordinator who will then receive an intense technological and pedagogical training. The…

The report, "The Ready to Teach Program: A Federal Initiative in Support of Online Courses for Teachers", describes the history of the Ready to Teach Program and its role as one of the solutions to the national need to increase the performance of teachers through professional development. The report describes selected findings from the Eisenhower…

In the late 70s, the state of Alabama with coordinating leadership of the State Department of Education undertook an initiative to strengthen teacher preparation programs and the certification process' The College of Education of the University of Alabama was an active participant in the efforts. The author represented the university and wrote the…

Rasch measurement can provide a much needed solution to scaling teacher ability. Typically, decisions about teacher ability are based on dichotomously scored certification tests focused on knowledge of content or pedagogy. This paper presents early developmental work of a partial credit teacher ability scale of 42 tasks (performances and…

The chapter prepared for inclusion in a handbook for school board members focused upon the important relationships of boards, as boards, and individual board members with external organizations and agencies. The handbook was produced by the Alabama Schools Boards Association for its membership and for its use in the orientation of new board…

The structure of attitudes toward services rendered by state departments was studied in six southeastern states with a 70-item scale. Development procedures are described. The scale was administered to randomly chosen samples of superintendents (N = 671), central office personnel (N = 404), principals (N = 627), teachers (N = 3,684), and other…