Intended to help teachers of young children prepare for diversity among their students, this early childhood education textbook focuses on the integration of assessment and learning as an interactive process; and the integration of curriculum and instruction to be age-, group-, and individually-appropriate. The introductory chapter discusses…

Educational Assessment is at the cornerstone of education in the 1990s. Advocates for alternative assessment believe that the new tasks should be redesigned to more closely resemble real learning tasks. Portfolio assessment encourages an integration between assessment and instruction and results in several positive educational outcomes. Portfolios…

This report presents a framework to help educators improve teacher training in family involvement. Information comes from the Harvard Family Research Project, which documented the nature and scope of preservice education in family involvement. Researchers reviewed state teacher certification requirements, surveyed courses and requirements at…

This report describes efforts by Portland State University (Oregon) (PSU) to undertake administrative restructuring, reinvent the curriculum with an interdisciplinary focus, and initiate experiential learning programs that benefit both students and the community. By reducing support staff and middle management, PSU freed up funds to create a…

This book provides key quantitative and qualitative data on vocational education and training (VET) in the European Union. Among the topics on which data are provided are the following: demographic trends, educational attainment, and the labor market (aging of the population and labor force, changes in educational attainment over time, impacts of…

Data from national Tech-Prep surveys that were completed by more than 800 Tech-Prep consortium coordinators in fall 1993 and/or fall 1994 were analyzed to assess the emergence of Tech-Prep at the state and local levels. It was discovered that, between 1993 and 1994, the number of Tech-Prep consortia nationwide increased from 812 to 953, the…

This report describes findings of two half-day focus group meetings that discussed experiences and concerns about the participation of students with Limited English Proficiency (LEP) in Minnesota's Basic Standards Exams. The focus groups included test coordinators, general classroom teachers, and English as a Second Language teachers. The report…

University of California Santa Barbara students were surveyed in 1996 to learn about student life and culture in the 1990s. Fifty-five percent of 815 randomly selected undergraduates responded to a mail survey. Responses were grouped according to students' race, gender, and social class. Reasons identified for attending college included: to…

Intended for parents (or surrogate parents) of children with disabilities in Arizona, this handbook explains rights and procedural safeguards under federal and state laws. Section 1, an introduction to special education, is followed by a section on parent rights in relation to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, initial evaluation,…

This book examines schools' legal responsibility for providing equal educational opportunities for children with disabilities under the 1997 reauthorized Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). First, an introduction to the American legal system and federal policy on disability is provided. Next, the six principles of special education…

Based on one middle school teaching team's curriculum improvement project, this monograph makes a case for actively involving students in all aspects of the teaching/learning process by means of a student-oriented curriculum. The goal of the project described was to provide an opportunity for students to study thematic units, working cooperatively…

The Child-to-Child (CtC) project involved school-age African children in monitoring younger children's weight and health (since much of the daily infant care in Africa is performed by preadolescents). CtC emphasizes local autonomy and is based on respect for children as morally responsible community members with a basic right to health and…

This book contains 10 papers based on a data set from the 1994 International Adult Literacy Survey, which collected data from more than 20,000 individual respondents in samples representative of the adult populations in 6 countries: Canada, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. The papers are: "Foreword"…

This training module on family centeredness is from the Mississippi Early Education Program for Children with Multiple Disabilities, a program designed to train Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Part H service coordinators and service providers to use family centered strategies. The first part of the module, "Trainer…

This report of a study at the University of Maryland describes an international, interactive, and interdisciplinary project for first- and second-year students, which combines a large lecture format with small-group, seminar-type sessions organized around a computer-assisted simulation model, the International Communication and Negotiation…