The Asian Business Council surveyed 40 large Asian businesses on training strategies, emerging skill shortages, government investment in training, and the quality of the education and training sector. Of the 25 businesses that responded, 23 had their head office in Asia and all but 3 had more than 500 employees. Although the responding businesses…

As part of a series exploring effective strategies for school improvement and dropout prevention, this monograph focuses on early childhood education and reading/writing programs, and compiles strategies to help families engage in meaningful literacy activities. The monograph describes and defines family literacy, provides a research basis for…

A study examined rural, low-income students' experiences with online advanced placement (AP) courses. Interviews were conducted with 30 students, their mentors, and school administrators at four rural high schools in two Western states; 25 students were low-income. Positive comments about the online experience mentioned interaction with other…

The fall 2004 and spring 2005 issues of Journal of Music Teacher Education, the online journal of MENC's Society for Music Teacher Education, in one print edition, includes a special issue on the future of music education, with articles about certification practices, second-career music teachers, music education philosophy and research for future…

The newest publication in the Spotlight series, this book gathers articles from state music educators association journals that give music teachers ideas on how to include special needs students, discuss why special learners benefit from music education, offer suggestions for dealing with specific types of special needs students, and address…

The purpose of this study was to determine the most effective way to prepare teacher candidates to work with English learners and students with disabilities by surveying teacher candidate perceptions regarding their preparation. A forty-item instrument was developed probing teacher candidates? perceptions of their level of preparation for working…

This report is the nation's sixth look at how its major city school systems are performing on the state assessments devised to boost standards, measure progress, provide opportunity, and ensure accountability for results. Data are presented on 66 city school systems from 38 states and the District of Columbia. The statistics are presented…

This report details the outcomes for children enrolled in two types of early intervention programs in Delaware: those serving young children with disabilities and those serving young children living in poverty. The Delaware Early Childhood Longitudinal Study was designed as a retrospective, two-group, posttest-only design. Participating in the…

Noting that directors of early care and education programs face numerous challenges on a daily basis, this book is designed to provide real-world answers to common situations, in a format that directors can access immediately. The book is organized into seven chapters. Chapter 1 addresses staff-related challenges and includes a list of "how…

A qualitative case study approach with individual and focus group interviews identified senior enlisted Army soldiers' primary motivations and perceived barriers to postsecondary education participation. The 92 interviewees shared these common characteristics: they were enlisted soldiers, were older, attended college part time, worked full time,…

A gender-based analysis of training that focuses on barriers to women because of changes in the availability of sponsorship leads to the conclusion that training programs for women in New Brunswick have been spotty at best. Women's training has occurred during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s under the aegis of the Canadian Manpower Training Program,…

A study explored which nonexperimental comparison group methods provide the most accurate estimates of the impacts of mandatory welfare-to-work programs and whether the best methods work well enough to substitute for random assignment experiments. Findings were compared for nonexperimental comparison groups and statistical adjustment procedures…

This issue looks at the different ways in which British providers of postsecondary education can weigh the quality of their provision to inform and shape improvements. The articles aim to provide a feel for current practice in internal evaluation to improve quality and to get providers thinking about some ways in which they can collect and use…

The Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center (the Met) is a unique public high school in Providence, Rhode Island. The Met has no classes, no grades, no tests, and no easy rides. With guidance from adults, each student builds a customized education focused on five learning goals: communication, social reasoning, empirical reasoning,…

This book describes the outcomes of a comparative study that brought together an international team of researchers from eight countries (United States, Scotland, New Zealand, Norway, the Netherlands, Ireland, Australia, and England). The purpose of the study was to develop case studies that would explore the process of inclusion and exclusion…