Developing positive school climates and improving school discipline policies and practices are critical steps to raising academic achievement and supporting student success. However, there is no single formula for doing so. Rather, the growing body of research and best practices in the field should inform locally developed approaches to improving…

In January 2011, the California Community Colleges Board of Governors formed a task force to chart a roadmap for system-wide focus on student success. The task force identified best practices and designed evidence-based recommendations to ensure student success is a driving theme in colleges. This comprehensive plan, known as the Student Success…

Houston Independent School District (HISD) has provided prekindergarten classes for Houston area four-year old students since the 1985-1986 academic year. The focus of the program is on lifelong learning to enhance the physical, emotional, and social wellbeing of the whole child and provide the foundational skills required for career and college…

A working paper on how to use common E-Learning platforms to incorporate critical thinking and reflection into traditional and hybrid formatted curriculums. Definitions and conceptual framework of both constructs are discussed and their benefits towards cognitions and reflection are highlighted. Best practices, including examples of previous…

This brief offers lessons and best practices from foundations across the country on grantmaking to school districts. It offers advice to foundations that are considering school district investments for the first time. It also offers a useful "check" to more experienced foundations that want to examine their thinking and approaches against the…

This study quantitatively reviews publicly available state policies as they relate to the transportation of wheelchair-seated students in school buses. Inclusion of best practices in specially equipped school bus and driver training policies was assessed. Key points of interest within state policies were identified based on site visits, common…

Numbers crunching isn't what it used to be. What might once have been the task of a minimalist keypunch is now an elaborate operation presided over by dedicated business intelligence (BI) systems. No one knows this better than the enterprise. Companies of all sizes must translate their mountains of raw data into meaningful insights and actionable…

From July 6th to 10th, 2010, International Peace Research Association (IPRA) held its biennial conference at the University of Sydney in Australia. Hosted by the University's Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies and coordinated by Jake Lynch and a team of dedicated staff and volunteers, the conference featured seven plenary panels and many…

The mission of the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) is to represent school psychology and support school psychologists to enhance the learning and mental health of all children and youth. "School psychologists" provide effective services to help children and youth succeed academically, socially, behaviorally, and emotionally.…

Seven elements found in professional development research are necessary for successful professional development programs. High-quality professional learning must be sustained, job-embedded, collegial, interactive, integrative, practical, and results-oriented.

With an increasing number of colleges and universities turning to part-time instructors to teach courses at their institutions, developmental education professionals are faced with the task of finding appropriate ways to train, serve, and evaluate these instructors. Unfortunately, there is little published information on how to accomplish these…

While many students and instructors are transitioning from the brick-and-mortar classrooms to virtual classrooms, labs, and simulations, this requires a higher-level of expertise, control, and perseverance by the instructor. Traditional methods of teaching, leading, managing, and organizing learn activities has changed in terms of the virtual…

This issue of "Assessment Update" presents the following articles: (1) SLO-Based Grading Makes Assessment an Integral Part of Teaching (Nagy N. Bengiamin and Christina Leimer); (2) Editor's Notes: Assessing Assessment's ROI (Trudy W. Banta); (3) Assessment Plans: A Tool for Sanity (Shannon M. Sexton); and (4) Lessons from…

In response to the rapid development of digital libraries over the past decade, researchers have focused on the use of metadata as an effective means to support resource discovery within online repositories. With the increasing involvement of libraries in digitization projects and the growing number of institutional repositories, it is anticipated…

This resource guide looks at new classroom-based literacy research that supports "all" learners, including culturally and linguistically diverse students. The authors demonstrate how teachers and researchers develop instructional practices based on multiple languages and the literacy contexts of their schools. They describe classrooms where…