Although parents are key stakeholders in the educational process, their perceptions are often neglected in studies of school reform. This paper presents findings of a study that explored the attitudes of parents of New York State high school students toward block scheduling. A survey of all parents of 11th and 12th graders in a rural New York high…

This study examined the reasons why students enrolled at Boise State University (BSU) in Idaho during the Fall 1995 semester did not return for the Spring semester. A total of 443 students who did not return for the Spring semester were surveyed. The study found that BSU leavers were more likely than a national sample of college leavers to…

The link between time and learning is one of the most consistent findings in educational research. This handbook describes a process for developing effective use of instructional time through the identification of important decision-making criteria and the use of these criteria to create a school schedule. The handbook describes an 11-step…

One critical means of reaching the goal to improve student learning is to restructure school time for professional development. This publication examines issues in promoting professional development for all staff during regular school time. The overview describes alternative strategies for effectively finding and using time to support…

This paper presents a case for the implementation of year-round education, arguing that education needs to effectively and efficiently utilize school facilities. The paper focuses on the cost of implementing and operating year-round schools--the impact on support services, transportation, facilities, and maintenance. Data are based on a review of…

Without fear, there is no courage, only ignorance of a situation's dynamics. Acknowledging a decision's liabilities promotes fear and forces the educational leader to exercise courage in formulating and carrying out a response to that situation. Courage alone is not enough, however, and could lead to professional suicide. Wisdom to marshal that…

A study focused primarily on building-level leadership by observing how principals in 12 high schools (11 public and 1 Catholic) engaged in planning a structural change from a traditional schedule with 45-minute periods to the 90-minute periods of a block schedule. Using a concerns-based model of change, principals' behaviors and teachers'…

This study examined the procedural changes that high school special education teachers make in their transition from traditional scheduling to block scheduling. Also, teachers' perceptions of the effect of block scheduling on the literacy skills of secondary students with special needs was examined. Teachers at a national special education…

This study was conducted to investigate teacher attitudes with respect to changing to a year-round school program. The hypothesis was that a majority of teachers would be opposed to changing the traditional 180 day schedule to a year-round schedule. The population in this study consisted of all the classroom teachers in a rural county of North…

Described is an agriculture supply and service curriculum which utilizes student-selected modules (30-hour blocks of instruction), job titles (areas of concentration), a student-run school agricultural supply store, and work experience components. (MS)

Florida Technical University's approximately 11,000 students use its Generalized Registration and Sectioning System (GRASS), which provides on-line advanced and regular registration, on-line add/drop and late registration with instant invoice and class schedule printing. Description of system capabilities, notes on development, and samples of…

A recent team-teaching experiment at Redhill Technical College is described presenting the problems, aims, results, and some reflections on the future. (MW)

Intended for use in a 3-hour instructional program at the graduate level, the packet contains an outline of the instructional content, 9 transparencies, 12 handouts, and 7 supplementary materials. The outline is organized in terms of content, instructor activity (such as showing a transparency), and student activity. Instruction covers the…

There are numerous ways to structure the introduction to film course so as to meet the needs of the different types of students who typically enroll. Assuming there is no production component in the course, the teacher is left with two major approaches to choose from--historical and aesthetic. The units in the course will typically be built around…

A quasi-experimental design was used in an investigation directed at determining whether laboratory time in microbiology would be more efficiently and effectively utilized if scheduled as semi-weekly sessions of 1.5 hours each rather than as a single 3-hour session. Efficiency was measured by the number of procedural and data errors made by…