This guide is intended for school leaders acting to involve families in the education of their children. A common concern is the amount and kinds of family involvement that lead to a positive school climate and higher student achievement. To address this concern, strategies are outlined to help school leaders in deciding upon the kinds of family…

Reforms that strive for educational excellence will fail unless they are meaningfully linked to schools' unique cultures. Chapter 1, "Introduction: The Case for School Culture," discusses the impact of culture on achievement, reform, and learning. Chapter 2, "Schools as Tribes," examines a school that transformed itself through…

Fourth in a series designed to provide early childhood educators with ideas and strategies for applying High/Scope principles, this idea book focuses on working with the parents of young children and presents 30 one-hour parent workshops in five areas. The book's introduction presents guiding principles for working with adult learners, discusses…

This paper summarizes the first 2 years of a school improvement effort in a low-performing rural school district in southern Virginia that involved developing a balanced K-12 curriculum aligned with the state's standards of learning. Project evaluation focused on changes in the school environment and in teaching and learning that resulted from the…

At all levels, Chicanos and Chicanas drop out of school at higher rates than any other racial or ethnic group, eventually resulting in under-representation within institutions of higher education. Although all Latino subgroups experience barriers to their education, Chicanos have the lowest rate of college completion (5 percent). Central to the…

This fact sheet about students who are deaf-blind provides information on orientation and mobility (O&M) training. It begins by describing orientation and mobility skills, and emphasizes the need for a team approach in the development and implementation of O&M instruction. Instructional strategies are described, including initial assessment of O&M…

In order to provide teachers and students with electronic learning environments that support mentoring and collaboration through electronic means, the authors developed software that supports same time/different place educational collaborative activities over the Internet. These activities focus on teaching students how to organize and systematize…

This paper examines the viability of journal writing as a distance education teaching technique designed to provide deeper understanding and mastery of curriculum content in graduate level education courses. In creating optimal learning experiences, four different types of journal writing can be utilized in various types of distance learning…

A science classroom was used to study the effects of a shared intranet environment on students' problem-solving ability and metacognitive reflection skills through shared contextualization. Subjects were first-time 9th- and 10th-grade biology students from three public high schools. An evaluative analysis of the CourseInfo software (Blackboard,…

Healthy, properly nourished students who feel safe are better able to concentrate on their work, attend school on a regular basis, and perform well in class and on tests. Despite such research findings, however, discussions about improving student achievement often occur separately from discussions about schools' roles in addressing health and…

With over half the nation's infants and toddlers in regular, non-parental child care, the quality of that care is a priority concern for policymakers. Many studies show that high-quality child care supports the positive social, emotional, and cognitive development of young children. The research summarized in this policy brief identifies factors…

This paper explores the nature and role of those forms of tertiary education that have been variously described as "transition", "foundation" and "bridging" education. It argues that much of the relevant literature is grounded implicitly or explicitly in technicist and liberal functionalist discourses. It then reviews…

"The school, as one of the significant agencies of the community, accepts its responsibilities for contributing to individual to individual, family, and community health. ...Classroom teachers in their daily contacts with boys and girls are the key persons in the school health program." These two sentences point up the theme of this bulletin. Four…

Competent authorities seem to agree as to the causes of eye strain in school children other than congenital defects. Standard works on diseases of the eye are practically unanimous in declaring that myopia results from the protracted and unhygienic use of the eyes in near work. Most of the factors tending to cause eye strain exist in the schools.…

This review of the literature highlights research-based ways to improve schools and classrooms. Emphasis is on student time-on-task, effective teacher behaviors, and positive teacher supervision. (JM)