Since 1965, Head Start has provided comprehensive services to help prepare the nation's most disadvantaged three- to five-year-old children for school and to strengthen their families. In 1998 Congress instructed the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to conduct an evaluation of Head Start to determine its impact on child development…

Teacher effectiveness is known to be a critical factor in student learning and success. California has made some notable efforts to strengthen teaching, but the most coherent state-level initiatives have been limited to the earliest stages of teachers' careers. After the credentialing and induction phase, state policy does virtually nothing to…

The 2004-05 school year didn't start off well for the Sanger Unified School District. The district, located east of Fresno, had entered its first year of "program improvement"--a gentler way of saying that Sanger was among the 98 lowest-performing districts in the state based on success criteria in the No Child Left Behind law. The…

This article examines the sustained impact of a workshop series held to support faculty engagement in program assessment in the College of Education at California State University, Long Beach. The four-part series, held monthly during spring 2008, was intended to enhance faculty understanding of their role in assessment of student learning at the…

Purpose: Research-intensive universities have special challenges in providing their students with civic education, particularly education that is rooted in the curriculum. Their efforts are important to the overall effort to promote education "for the common good" at colleges and universities because of their stature within the higher education…

In late 2005 the Select Panel on Revisioning Education in Maine issued their draft report describing a series of recommendations for the improvement of student learning in Maine. The Panel, convened by the Maine State Board of Education, and pursuant to Tile 20-A statutory requirements, developed their recommendations through six months of data…

Central to California's school accountability system are programs to engage low-performing schools in improvement efforts. One of these is the High Priority Schools Program (HPSGP), created by Assembly Bill 961 (Chapter 747, "Statutes of 2001") to provide funds to the lowest performing schools in the state. To be eligible for funding,…

Increasing the numbers of students who participate in financial aid programs has become a critical issue for many state systems. Reasons for the low rates of financial aid uptake vary, from lack of awareness among students to the many and complex types of aid available to inadequate capacity at the institutional level for conducting outreach to…

The NSF-funded Integrating Data Analysis (IDA) Project undertaken by the American Sociological Association (ASA) and the Social Science Data Analysis Network sought to close the quantitative literacy gap for sociology majors. Working with twelve departments, the project built on lessons learned from ASA's Minority Opportunities through School…

A group of low-performing schools received additional state funds to improve achievement as part of California's Immediate Intervention/Underperforming Schools Program (II/USP). A mixed-method evaluation was conducted to determine whether II/USP schools outperformed similar non-II/USP schools, how teachers and administrators understood resources…

Located within the Navajo Nation, Ganado Public Schools are committed to improving educational services through a long-term district restructuring process. This process involves: (1) strategic planning and envisioning sessions that generate concrete details of future schools; (2) reorganization of personnel to support curriculum development and…

This book seeks to summarize what is known about sources of racial and ethnic prejudice in the United States and to identify ways that individuals and organizations can act to reduce intolerance and discrimination. The volume's 17 chapters are organized into four parts. Part I, "The Changing Policy Context," contains: (1) "Schooling and Social…

Project Achieve Transition Services (PATS) is a four-year high school attendance improvement, dropout prevention project which targets late-entry students consisting primarily of immigrants, transfers, and long-term absentees. The program uses a case management approach to provide support services, instructional enhancements, and family outreach…

Academic libraries in Ohio were surveyed to determine the existence and content of training in customer service offered to library employees in the circulation and reference departments. Surveys were mailed to 127 libraries, and achieved a return rate of 68% (n=87). The survey contained questions about customer service training for both new and…

In response to dramatic enrollment declines between 1991 and 1996, 19 division deans at Indiana's Vincennes University (VU) implemented the Pathways Project to renew their role as campus leaders and address the causes of the enrollment decline. In the project's first year, considerable success was achieved in involving over 100 faculty in five…