This document presents the lessons of Jobs for the Future's Benchmark Communities Initiative (BCI), a 5-year systemic educational reform initiative launched in 1994 in five communities. Before joining the BCI, the five Benchmark communities had each begun a school-to-career effort. Five key findings from the BCI are outlined: (1) students engaged…

Thomas Jefferson High School (Pittsburgh) has successfully experimented with the Career Information System developed by the Appalachia Educational Laboratory. (Author)

A system was developed to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of transition services for special education students in Maine. The project's three phases included preliminary activities relevant to the development of the evaluation system; activities in developing, field testing, and revising the evaluation strategy; and selecting and evaluating…

This volume contains tables of results to accompany an executive summary produced for a project which evaluated the impact and effectiveness of transition services for special education students in Maine. The tables contain data for each of the 21 participating school districts, covering the following program evaluation components: staff survey…

Recently, the momentum of competency based education (CBE) has increased sharply in Oregon, due in part to the public outcry against perceived failures in the K-12 public school program. CBE is a program for certifying student performance that requires demonstration of an acceptable level of skill in those areas deemed vital to success in…

Describes the use of a decision support system to operate on a database for academic scheduling. Discusses the scheduling environment, database subsystem, dialog subsystem, modeling subsystem, and output formats. (JM)

Discusses the design of management information systems for secondary schools and presents a fundamental approach to systems design that was used for the development of SCHOLIS, a computer-assisted school information system for Dutch secondary schools. The importance of information system development methodologies is stressed. (LRW)

Describes a two-year program using the characteristics of ecology as a framework for inquiry and learning. Discusses the framework as a model for the biological, social, political, historical, and cultural systems that make up the content of the grade 9-10 curriculum. (CCM)

This second article of a 3-part series on reprographics reviews the teaching of reprographics and focuses attention on instructional strategies that should be employed. (Author/AG)

This paper presents a World Wide Web-based infrastructure for cooperation between many different parties. The infrastructure is designed for Web-based competitions involving an editorial board, designers of assignments or events, evaluators, different organizational layers, and contestants. Web-CS is entirely Web-based: all the communication…

Studied the effects of state policies on the areas of tracking, content, and pedagogy on the faculties of eight German secondary schools after the fall of socialism. Teachers forcefully adjusted their beliefs to the new tracking structure, but did not necessarily adjust teaching standards. (SLD)

This guidance support systems handbook was designed to assist local, regional, or State guidance personnel who wish to develop locally-relevant career information materials. These materials may serve as a career information system or may be used to supplement commercial materials which are national in scope. Sections of the handbook cover…

Describes a systems development process to organize and report the data needed to prepare a microcomputer program for evaluating library instruction programs in high school libraries and media centers. A flow chart illustrating the sample program and seven references are included. (JL)