Community colleges offer many advantages over other types of institutions, financially and educationally. This article will explore some of those advantages, including comparisons to other types of institutions. A brief introduction to accreditation will contextualize how community colleges have advantages of certain institutions. Lastly,…

Thirty specialists in humanitarian work supporting the care and protection of children in crisis settings completed a 3-phase Delphi consultation. Proposals of best practice were elicited, reviewed, and rated by participants. A high level of consensus support was reached for 55 statements. These statements emphasized utilization of existing…

Ten years of advocacy targeted at establishing a statewide residential school of mathematics and science offers valuable lessons. These lessons learned from one advocacy journey can be applied to other advocacy efforts and generalized beyond this particular example. Therefore, this article provides more than a description of one advocacy story.…

A foundational research assumption for this project is that the combination of open-ended-art and structured-art will enhance the development of the kindergartener. In today's standards driven classroom environment, art is often overlooked in place of text based curriculum. The idea of this project is to blend two approaches to teaching art and…

This paper discusses the transition from traditional face to face instruction to a hybrid format using the newly drafted 8 Standards of the Educational Leadership Constituents Council (2010) as guidelines for the curriculum, the 14 Learner Centered Principles (1997) from the American Psychological Association as elements for instructional…

Assessment personnel are those individuals who work in the capacity of evaluation of students with disabilities, including, but not limited to, educational diagnosticians, educational examiners, psychometrists, and instructional specialists. These professionals are responsible for identifying strengths and weaknesses and for providing teachers…

Establishing school-based professional learning appears so simple and straightforward during inspiring presentations at summer workshops, but keeping collaborative work focused on teaching and learning in such a way that it produces consistent results is a highly underestimated task. Investigations and experience from a group of researchers at the…

The purpose of this article is to describe the Quality Educators Academy (QEA), a year-long training for K-8 classroom teachers that was funded by a NC ESEA Title II-A Improving Teacher Quality (NC QUEST) Grant. Key features of the project as well as the design and content of the training contributed to success in recruiting, retaining, and…

A longitudinal evaluation study of a science professional development program for K-12 teachers was conducted using the CIPP evaluation model. Eleven years of program data were described and analyzed. Elementary teachers comprised 62% of the 384 participants, 17% of all participants were middle school teachers, and 13% of all participants were…

This report describes a problem based learning project focusing on the cultural elements of a high performing school district. Current literature on school district culture provides numerous cultural elements that are present in high performing school districts. With the current climate in education placing pressure on school districts to perform…

This practical resource is brimming with ideas and guidance for using simple ideas from speech and language pathology and occupational therapy to boost communication, sensory integration, and coordination skills in children on the autism spectrum. Suitable for use in the classroom, at home, and in community settings, it is packed with…

Schedule redesign is only one small part of the much larger approach to turning around low-performing schools. Even so, most states' No Child Left Behind waiver applications show a disappointing lack of detail on learning time. While they've done some careful thinking about schedule redesign, states must continue to think critically and…

K-12 schools with large immigrant populations face a myriad of challenges, including low academic achievement and high dropout rates of Latino students. Parental involvement is a practical strategy in positively influencing student outcomes along the K-12 continuum. To this end, it is essential that immigrant impacted schools work together with…

The purpose of this study was to provide professional development in vocabulary instructional practices and analyze the impact on student achievement. This quasi-experimental study utilized the PLC to curriculum map English/Language Arts state academic vocabulary words in K-4 into each of the four nine-weeks. The first through fourth grade…

In spite of the increased use of virtual worlds for language teaching and learning, few empirical studies have addressed the teachers' perspectives regarding teaching in these 3D virtual environments. An understanding of how virtual worlds such as Second Life may be beneficial for the design of enriching language learning experiences helps…