This report is one of nine detailed case studies of small urban high schools that served as the foundation for the Education Resource Strategies (ERS) report "Strategic Designs: Lessons from Leading Edge Small Urban High Schools." These nine schools were dubbed "Leading Edge Schools" because they stand apart from other high…

This paper discusses teacher education, institutional growth and the economy of information. It compares the sector of teacher education with global markets, described by Thomas Friedman in his book "The world is flat", as emerging and "flattening" in light of rapid technological and communication advances. The institutional…

The perceptions of school climates at high- and low-performing schools were studied in 11 elementary schools from a large, multicultural urban school district selected for their high or low achievement. The sample consisted of 151 teachers from the 5 high-performing schools and 146 from the low-performing schools. School performance was determined…

Several decades of research has demonstrated that students' perceptions about the amount of control they have over academic successes and failures contribute significantly to school performance. This paper reviews research studies that have investigated locus of control and causal attribution in the school setting. Suggestions are made for…

This publication sets forward the California State Postsecondary Education Commission's historical and present perspective on educational equity in California higher education and was prompted by Governor Wilson's June 1, 1995 Executive Order to End Preferential Treatment and to Promote Individual Opportunity Based on Merit (Executive Order…

In spring 1989, a group of 33 administrators, supervisors, faculty, and staff from El Camino College (ECC) in Torrance, California, attended 10 days of training in Total Quality Management (TQM) tools and techniques. The subsequent implementation of TQM at ECC included the following six phases: (1) establishing a Campus Commitment to Excellence…

This report documents the second of two studies on teaching and learning generic skills in high schools. It extends the earlier work by providing a model for designing classroom instruction in both academic and vocational classrooms where teaching generic skills is an instructional goal. Ethnographic field methods were used to observe, record, and…

This paper describes a study that addressed problems related to the disparity in achievement between disadvantaged and nondisadvantaged students. The first part of the study consisted of an analysis of three early intervention programs: the Responsive Early Childhood Education Program, the Reading Recovery program, and the Success for All program.…

This monograph represents an attempt to deepen the understanding of educational contexts and practices in Hungary and Finland, to shed some light on findings in multi-national studies, and to serve general information interests. The study documents observations about the Finnish educational scene in late 1992, although the situation has changed…

This paper discusses the impact of layout and design of child care centers on the education of young children. It asserts that child care facilities must be designed to support and stimulate children's natural developmental processes, providing both direct and indirect educational opportunities. The paper discusses the stages of the design process…

Expert reports about integrated learning (IL) and vocational-technical education (VTE) activities in Organisation for Economic Cooperation Development (OECD) English speaking member countries, on France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Portugal, Finland, papers of the relevant OECD seminars in Phoenix, Arizona, and in Marseille, France were…

Drawing on a 1993 study of four students in a late French immersion program in Australia and findings from a 1991 study, the report looks at three areas: students' response to the learning context, including its more and less helpful characteristics; the experiences students consider most important for learning the language, including those…

This book is written to help teachers incorporate a more realistic view of the world, respect for diversity, and a sense of shared humanity into all areas of their work with children aged 3 to 8 years. It focuses on young children's understanding of differences, their interpersonal and intergroup relationships, and related teaching practices,…

A discussion of second language testing focuses on the need for collaboration among researchers in second language learning, teaching, and testing concerning development of context-appropriate language tests. It is argued that the nature of the proficiency construct in language is not constant, but that different linguistic, functional, and…

This study investigated the ability of student inputs, student involvements, and college environments to predict seven groups of academic majors. The research was conducted using a sample of college sophomores extracted from High School and Beyond 1982 follow-up cohort, N=43,614 (weighted). Among the findings of the hierarchical discriminant…