This book is a survival guide as well as a valuable tool for making our schools more effective and appropriate places for students to learn and achieve. Exploring the often complex, multifaceted, and co-occurring problems in the education system, the book addresses specific problems, discusses the real reasons they developed and persist, describes…

This report extends previous Center explorations of the status of organized efforts to provide student supports. In 2005 we did a policy and practice analysis of school improvement planning guides to determine how student supports were formally integrated into school improvement planning. We followed this, in 2006, with analyses of a sample of…

Considerable controversy surrounds discussion of a mayor's role in public education. From a policy perspective, however, it is essential that every mayor help improve schools. This issue of the quarterly newsletter of the Center for Mental Health in Schools includes the following features and regular segments: (1) Open letter to the Mayor--A…

Since implementing NCLB (No Child Left Behind), raising of test scores and making AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) have been paramount in the schools and the search has been on to find "THE" answer in the schools' quest to attain these goals. When hunting for appropriate methods to reach these objectives, needs assessments are often…

A comprehensive review of the literature on the evaluation of learning objects revealed a number of problem areas, including emphasizing technology ahead of learning, an absence of reliability and validity estimates, over-reliance on informal descriptive data, a tendency to embrace general impressions of learning objects rather than focusing on…

In today's increasingly complex and competitive global economy, a range of skills and a variety of learning tools are necessary for postsecondary students to succeed after they graduate. With this in mind, educators are using an increasing number of new technologies for the classroom to improve learning and increase pass rates among students.…

In the United States, evidence abounds on the effects of expenditures and class size on student achievement, but often it is controversial. In other parts of the world, hard evidence is not as easy to come by, mostly because of data limitations. But over the years, testing agencies have started to collect data on student performance and family…

The Northwest Frontier Addiction Technology Transfer Center surveyed addiction educators, providers and policy makers in Northwest states and Hawaii to define teaching resources and barriers in the teaching of evidence-based practices for the preparation of addiction professionals. The top three teaching resource needs were example student…

Teachers in South Africa deal with the remnants of an inherited education system based on segregation and exclusion of particular groups of students. While the previous practices of segregation resided within the context of racial groupings, exclusionary practices related to disabilities, academic abilities, and language competence are evident…

Preparing every student to make knowledgeable career choices through academic rigor and work-based learning experiences requires a systematic, comprehensive and community-wide effort. Schools cannot truly prepare their students for productive and rewarding careers in an academic vacuum. Engaging business and community leaders, who may someday hire…

Community colleges are unique among higher education institutions in their potential access to local appropriations as well as state funding. A total of 26 states reported to the Education Commission of the States in 2001 that community colleges in their states received some share of local funding. Using data for 781 public community colleges, we…

Many issues have been identified in outdoor teaching, especially in places that lack the capacity to effectively present information about such subjects as historical relics, rare animals, and geological landscapes. This study proposes an Environment of Ubiquitous Learning with Educational Resources (EULER) based on radio frequency identification…

When the literature anthologies did not arrive, Allen Webb turned to the Internet, where he found a wealth of classic and contemporary e-texts. Using these online resources opened up possibilities for new ways of teaching and learning traditional skills of close reading and critical analysis. Students created blogs of poems and commentary,…

Between 1999 and 2003, the Western Massachusetts Writing Project experienced a series of changes that made it question whether it could survive as a writing project site. The convergence of retirement, unexpected death, and withdrawal of long-term financial support forced the existing leadership to develop a process to look deeply into the work of…

Alternative routes to teacher preparation are clearly here to stay. A growing research literature on non-traditional pathways suggests the complexity of the task ahead. This report offers new teachers the opportunity to tell their own stories in their own words. In "Alternative Certification and Alternative Pathways: A Personal Take on a Core…