Describes proposals intended to strengthen the American family, specifically initiatives to improve child immunization programs, expand Project Head Start, advance the Family Preservation and Support initiative, reform welfare programs, and adopt a national health care program. (MDM)

Examines recent developments in education, such as those mentioned in the Carnegie Council's "Turning Points: Preparing American Youth for the 21st Century" and recommendations from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, that support increased specialization for middle grade teacher education programs. Reviews changes in…

Peer management was utilized as a source of feedback in a staff training and management program with six subjects, who were instructors in a vocational program for adults with mental retardation. The paired subjects were trained to monitor peer teaching, record and graph data, provide feedback, and set goals. (DB)

A Head Start center assessed and improved its nutrition program. The process involved understanding the program's flaws; developing strategies for change that emphasized mental health and education and impacted all components of the curriculum; and fostering positive staff attitudes toward nutrition. (SM)

Six theme articles assess the impact five years later of the National Academy of Sciences report, "Understanding Agriculture." Topics discussed include strategic planning, agricultural education's mission, teacher education, policy research needs, and agricultural literacy. (SK)

The Vocational Education Resource System (VERS) helps career/vocational educators, counselors, and administrators improve and expand programs for special populations. It offers technical assistance in program administration, instructional strategies, finances, accountability, and grant writing. VERS maintains a regional database of educators,…

Describes the use of live, interactive television for distance education at the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Hawaii. Problems resulting from new administrative and psychological demands on students and faculty are discussed, and mechanisms for increasing activity and improving student access to materials and…

Considers a collaboration model (Eastman-Rochester Partnership) between an urban school district music program and a nationally recognized collegiate-level school of music. Explains that the purpose of this coalition is to build a new model of urban music education while restoring a once outstanding inner-city music program. (CMK)

Examines the role of marketing, promotional activities, and public relations in library instructional services and discusses some reactions to using these techniques to improve instruction programs. Considers information technology, the explosion of available information, and changes in users, and emphasizes the need to respond to user needs.…

Describes the standards and guidelines developed for learning assistance programs by the Committee for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS), and those for program components by the National Association of Developmental Education (NADE). Suggests how they can be used to identify needs and improve existing services. (VWC)

Continuous quality improvement efforts are vital to high-quality early intervention services. This article describes an ongoing quality improvement project within an infant mental health-based Early Head Start program. Both strategies and challenges in implementing issues and lessons learned in the initial 2-year phase of the quality improvement…

Future-point learning is a perspective that anticipates new developments and concentrates on the future emerging into view. Future-point learning takes as its starting point the requirements of tomorrow and what will be needed in the future. This article discusses professional development for school leaders grounded in the idea of future-point…

Although focus groups continue to gain popularity in marketing and social science research, their use in program evaluation has been limited. Here we demonstrate how focus groups can benefit evaluators, program staff, policy makers and administrators by providing an in-depth understanding of program effectiveness from the perspective of…

This article delineates the results of 7 gifted program evaluation studies conducted in 20 different school districts and places them in the context of major areas for gifted program improvement. The author suggests that the field of gifted education may be vulnerable to losing its infrastructure at local levels if enhanced program development in…

According to the hedonic treadmill model, good and bad events temporarily affect happiness, but people quickly adapt back to hedonic neutrality. The theory, which has gained widespread acceptance in recent years, implies that individual and societal efforts to increase happiness are doomed to failure. The recent empirical work outlined here…