This report discusses professional development projects that are currently funded by the Improving Teacher Quality (ITQ) State Grants Program, including representative projects that will be presented to the Commission at the June meeting. In addition, the ITQ program has recently released a Request for Proposals (RFP) for grants that serve early…

The research evidence suggests that strong instructional leaders greatly can impact teaching and learning. There also is increasing recognition that instructional coaches can play an effective role in improving classroom-level practices. A natural way for school leaders to take on the role of instructional leader is to serve as a "chief" coach for…

Shared databases are used for knowledge exchange in groups. Whether a person is willing to contribute knowledge to a shared database presents a social dilemma: Each group member saves time and energy by not contributing any information to the database and by using the database only to retrieve information which was contributed by others. But if…

In this era of accountability, schools are challenged to leave no child behind, which includes making schools more responsive to students' needs. For many multicultural learners, the noble ideal of leaving no child behind has not yielded the desired dividends in general and special education. The processes of identification, assessment,…

Since funding is not always available for the basic instructional programs, let alone the special programs needed to ensure that every student will make adequate yearly progress (AYP), many campuses and school districts are turning to grants. In the short term, grants are wonderful things that enable educators to build programs to meet the…

In light of the widespread recognition of the enduring challenge of enhancing the learning of all students--including a growing number of students representing diverse racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds--there has been an explosion of literature on teaching, learning, and assessment in higher education. Notwithstanding scores of…

This Annual Plan presents the major initiatives and priorities the U.S. Department of Education (Department) Office of Inspector General (OIG) intends to undertake to assist the Department in fulfilling its responsibilities to America's taxpayers and students. The Department continues to face significant challenges in FY 2019 that impact its…

Domestic Violence (DV) continues to be a worldwide public health problem. Research in the area indicates that domestic violence has damaging, long-term serious mental, emotional, as well as physiological consequences both for the partners of the perpetrators and for their children. Even though various programs focused on treatments of the damaging…

As expectations for early childhood education (ECE) increase, there is a corresponding need for effective leadership in classrooms, programs, and the organizations that form the field's infrastructure. A recent study examined how the ECE field is addressing its need for leadership by focusing attention on the leadership development programs…

One of the important rationales for the development and implementation of a rigorous classroom-based measure of preservice teacher quality is that such a tool will provide new sources of data that are highly relevant to the task of improving programs of teacher preparation. However, research on data utilization within organizations from a variety…

Students from rural areas face additional burdens, such as affordability, academic preparation, and lack of college-going resources that make seeking, enrolling, and attending college more difficult. Community colleges offer hope to achieve a college degree for many rural students, and well-developed articulation agreements can be one way of…

This column contains information on how students in graduate library and information science programs participate in a forum to discuss key issues they see in academic library public services, to envision what they feel librarians in public service have to offer to academia, to state their visions for the profession, or to tell of research that is…

In this paper a STEM Education Outreach (STEM-EO) Model for promoting strategic university outreach programming at Penn State University to the benefit of university, school district and community stakeholders is described. The model considers STEM-EO as a complex system involving overarching learning goals addressed within four outreach domains…

Examining traditional and contemporary professional development practices of youth-serving organizations can inform practices across Extension, particularly in light of the barriers that have been noted for effectively developing the professional competencies of Extension educators. With professional development systems changing quickly,…

Physical education classes at the authors' high school expose students to a variety of activities that are specifically geared toward their interests. The teachers and students also assess learning with the goal of attaining physical education standards including skills, strategies, rules, and personal/social responsibility. Seven years ago…