The Minnesota Educational Effectiveness Program (MEEP) was authorized by legislative act in 1983 and has been operational since 1984. MEEP is a school-based education improvement process. As of January 1991, MEEP serves 593 schools, representing 244, or 54 percent, of the 430 school districts in Minnesota. The design of the MEEP process is based…

In 1992, a survey was conducted of employers of former students at Pima Community College (PCC), in Arizona, to assess graduates' on-the-job performance and provide data for program review. Questionnaires were mailed to 125 supervisors of 1991-92 PCC graduates who had given permission for their supervisors to be contacted, asking the employers to…

This book was designed to help citizens evaluate and improve their local schools. It contends that the solution to the potential end of America's progress is through positive school reform--the public management of schools. It presents a system of participative and results-oriented management that is implemented by boards, administrators, and…

National education policy reforms often do not translate into changes at the classroom level. This paper presents a conceptual framework developed for Sub-Saharan Africa to assist policy-makers in bridging the gap between school practice and national policies. It also describes how the framework was applied to current school-improvement efforts in…

This paper provides a cross-program view of the results of three successful school improvement programs that regional educational laboratories developed and implemented. The programs and their developers are: (1) A+chieving Excellence from the Mid-Continental Regional Educational Laboratory; (2) Onward to Excellence (OTE) from the Northwest…

This report presents grade six findings of the Longitudinal Study of Children at Risk, an on-going, prospective study that has followed 1,235 low-income, minority children in the Chicago Public Schools since 1986. Three major questions are addressed in the report: What are the children's levels of school competence and socioemotional development?;…

In the spirit of educational reform, this paper discusses school restructuring and proposes a model for making education more responsive to the needs of urban youth by fostering competence built upon unique cultural resources and individual skills already possessed. The proposed project would target the middle school, which is considered an ideal…

This report describes the success of the LaHarpe (Illinois) Community Unit School District in raising student math scores on the Illinois Goal Assessment Program (IGAP). Low IGAP test results and faculty dissatisfaction with scores precipitated the school district to modify the content and delivery of math instruction based on student needs…

An on-going study of the performance of high-poverty schools in Texas is revealing entire school districts where such schools are achieving high academic results. Instead of isolated pockets of excellence, a few large and medium-sized districts have been identified in which a cluster of high-poverty schools is achieving at the top levels of the…

This paper traces the Colorado Legislature's House Bill 1187, Article 13 from its inception through to its present implementation and addresses various pertinent issues in regard to accountability. The legislation mandates accountability in higher education within Colorado. The issues discussed are the rationale and underlying concepts, schools of…

A deviant case analysis pilot study analyzed California local education agency data to determine the usefulness of regression analysis in predicting change in achievement from 1984 to 1989 and identified outliers or districts that show greater achievement changes than would be expected given changed demographic conditions. This report on the…

The relationship between effective schools research and the cultural aspect of school organizations are examined in this paper. The first part discusses how effective schools projects are designed and implemented as opposed to what is actually practiced. Differences between "tinkering" with existing structures, a strategy to maintain the status…

"A Vision for the Future" is a comprehensive long-range plan to study, develop, implement, and evaluate an ambitious dropout reduction program in the Charleston (South Carolina) School District. The program entails: (1) improved data reporting on student performance, grade retention, and attrition to identify dropout indicators and risk…

The relevance of major concepts associated with social learning theories for teaching deprived and minority children are reviewed; from these concepts postulates are abstracted which are intended to induce further inquiry and research. The paper describes practical application of social learning theories to education, offering the school a common…

Summaries of 73 conference presentations dealing with youth at risk are divided into 6 sections, as was the conference. Section 1 "Understanding Students at Risk," identifies a variety of human services and insights along with suggested procedures for prediction and identification of youth at risk. Section 2, "Preventing and Reducing Incidents of…