This guide is part of an initiative to support the efforts of the Organizations Concerned about Rural Education (OCRE) in helping rural school districts plan for school improvement. The guide outlines a one-day workshop to help focus attention on ways to gain community support and plan initiatives. After explaining how to plan the workshop, the…

The 1994 School-to-Work Opportunities Act (STWOA) offers states federal assistance to develop and implement statewide systems for ensuring that all K-12 students have a seamless transition from secondary education to high-quality employment and/or further education. This report describes findings from studies by the Mid-Continent Regional…

This document contains selected proceedings from a conference that was convened in the Mississippi Delta region to provide interested stakeholders (citizens and local public officials) with information about recent federal and state welfare reform legislation. The document begins with an explanation of how the old Aid to Families with Dependent…

In spring 1997, members of the 1990 graduating classes of 12 public and private high schools in Marin County, California, were surveyed regarding their accomplishments after high school and their perceptions of the quality of their high school education. Surveys were mailed to 1,932 members of the class of 1990. A 34.3% response rate (662…

Designed to help adult learners realize the importance and necessity of implementing continuous quality improvement (CQI) in a rapidly changing, competitive, and modern world of work, this document presents a comprehensive explanation of CQI. The following topics are discussed in the book's introduction and seven chapters: importance of quality in…

CHOICE (Career Help at Overbrook for Individuals Who Choose Employment) has been identified as an exemplary school-to-work program that includes students with disabilities. This program at Overbrook School for the Blind in Philadelphia serves students with a primary disability of blindness or severe visual impairment. Many have additional…

School-to-Career describes a system of integrated school-based and work-based learning that integrates academic and occupational learning in the Austin Independent School District (AISD) (Texas). Between August 1997 and May 1998, 9,662 students were enrolled in career and technology courses in the district. During the 1997-98 school year, the AISD…

This document consists of four consecutive issues of a literary magazine written by adult workplace literacy students of the Casco Bay (Maine) Partnership for Workplace Education. The Partnership was a federally funded workplace literacy program that provided customized basic skills education at seven business sites in the Portland area, serving…

The School-to-Work Urban Opportunities Program represents a 5-year commitment by the Houston Independent School District (HISD) (Texas) and the Houston Community College System to establish a program to facilitate students' development of the skills and abilities necessary to secure meaningful employment. The program involves one high school and…

This is the final report on formative research for the "Yes, Inc." series, a production of KCET, Channel 28, in Los Angeles (California), with a grant from the U.S. Department of Education under the Emergency School Aid Act. "Yes, Inc." is a series of six programs intended for inner-city minority youth in grades six to eight.…

This two-part document reports the results of a literature review of workplace literacy program evaluation and then details a study of two current workplace literacy programs. The five chapters of the first part summarize findings on what is known about workplace literacy programs, methods for evaluating workplace literacy programs, assessing…

This report summarizes two joint sessions held by the Indian Nations At Risk Task Force and the National Advisory Council on Indian Education to hear testimony on issues related to Native American adult and vocational technical education. Issues and problems are: (1) the positive effects of adult education on American Indians and their children,…

This literature review is part of a project designed to provide an in-depth picture of the experiences and views of long-term unemployed people in Australia. The review outlines what the research shows and says about the situation of young people (15-24 years) in work and education in the changing society of the 1980s in Australia. The book is…

An external evaluation was made of the Competitive Skills Project, a National Workplace Literacy Program carried out in partnership between El Camino College and BP Chemicals. Among the problems identified were the following: (1) because the original director and his successor left the project, the original evaluation design could not be…

National Longitudinal Survey on Youth data indicate a large proportion of each youth cohort is still struggling in the labor market in their early 30s. Unemployment spells of long duration are common. A future problem is scarcity of needed skills in the kinds of jobs that will have to be created if the nation's economy is to regain its competitive…