This combined report examines the obstacles that Virginia students encounter as they move from high school through college and what colleges and universities might do to facilitate their progress. Part 1 of the report responds to House Joint Resolution No. 211, which asks Virginia's Council of Higher Education to study the transition between high…

Libraries exist for the benefit of the mind, but they have practical problems coping with the acquisition, storage, and handling of the documents and records with which they deal. Any change in technology that would have a significant effect on the methods available for these procedures could have important consequences for library service. The…

Canadian financial services organizations, and retail banking in particular, are changing rapidly due to the spiraling costs of labor, the influence of computers, and global competition. These changes are especially affecting bank tellers, who will need new skills to adapt to the changing workplace. To develop a timely and relevant training…

Tech prep was created to serve high school students in the two middle quartiles who neither prepare for further study nor gain adequate technical workplace skills by blending liberal and practical arts into a 2+2 secondary-postsecondary articulated curriculum leading to an associate degree. Tech prep is a cornerstone of the Carl D. Perkins…

Increasing shortages of skilled workers have resulted in numerous changes and innovations in vocational-technical education (VTE). The overriding objective of these changes/innovations is to improve youths' work readiness. At the secondary level, school systems have adopted business-sponsored programs and integrated them into curricula. Efforts to…

This paper describes a funded project, Families and Neighborhood Schools (FANS), which provided coordinated services for selected at-risk middle school students. The FANS project, based at Bryson Middle School in Greenville County School District, South Carolina, collaborated with the county mental health center to offer school-based mental health…

An accountability model for the California community colleges must be based on an extensive discussion of precisely who is being held accountable, to whom are they responsible, what are they responsible for, and how will such responsibility be enforced. In developing its model, the Assembly Bill 1725 Accountability Task Force of the California…

An evaluation assessed the effectiveness and adequacy of North Dakota's vocational-technical system in carrying out the purposes of the Carl Perkins Act and the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) and the coordination that took place between the acts. The evaluation that centered on schools' and institutions' efforts to fulfill the purposes of the…

The undergraduate program to train secondary school teachers of English as a foreign language (TEFL) at Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) in Oman is examined. First, the Omani context of language learning is discussed, notably need for English language skills for technological and economic development in a region with limited contact with the West…

High economic growth and growing movements toward democratic political systems are reshaping the Pacific countries, and these movements will have profound implications for libraries. The program of the meeting of the Association of Research Libraries was devoted to the cultures, societies, and libraries of the Pacific Rim. Program Session I,…

This participant's manual provides local educational agency/district teams of instructional leaders a way of examining their personal beliefs and values, developing a more inclusionary perspective, and gaining skills for creating schools that work for all students including those with severe disabilities. Team participation is emphasized as…

Problems associated with criterion-referenced language testing are discussed in the context of both standardized proficiency testing and classroom assessment. First, different interpretations of criterion-referencing are examined. A range of approaches for defining criteria and performance levels in second language assessment are outlined, and…

A selection of essays on foreign language planning at the national level contains articles on the language planning process, language choice, teacher education, testing and assessment, and transnational planning. Essays include the following: "Foreign Language Teaching Policy: Some Planning Issues" (Theo J. M. van Els); "Foreign…

At the 1989 annual meeting of the American Library Association (ALA), the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) used a think tank as a dynamic mechanism for exploring future directions both in the discipline of library user education and for the Bibliographic Instruction (BI) Section of ACRL. Discussion centered on the following…

This book provides an account of life in the inner city from World War II to the present. Poor, jobless, and racially outcast young black people are economically and socially excluded from the American mainstream. To compensate for this, inner-city children turn to American traditions of consumerism and violence. Buying into the implicit message…