Objective: In 1997, Michigan's Family Independence Agency piloted case management procedures designed to expedite permanency and improve services to children in foster care. Method: A 3-year evaluation examined outcomes in nine pilot and nine comparison counties to determine if children in the pilot counties achieved permanency, either returned…

This article reviews recent policies and government initiatives that have aimed to improve the uptake of vocational qualifications amongst hard-to-reach groups in the working population. The Employer Training Pilots and the Sector Skills Pilots have been designed to trial new ways of engaging employers in training and encouraging the take-up of…

In this article, the author describes how Cato-Meridian, a 450-student rural high school in the New York State, successfully implemented a new cocurricular eligibility policy that integrated after-school activities with student academic accountability. The program created data that drove decisions about student life and student-teacher interaction…

Objective: The current research was designed to develop a health education programme for type 2 diabetes mellitus based on the Taba-Tyler model and to evaluate its effect. Design: The study was quasi-experimental in design. Setting: Fifty-five patients from the Endocrinology and Metabolism Unit, University Hospital of Ankara. Method: An education…

The evaluation of the Texas Rural Technology (R-Tech) Pilot sought to understand how districts implemented R-Tech grants, the effects of implementation on student and teacher outcomes, as well as the cost effectiveness and sustainability of R-Tech. The Texas legislature (80th Texas Legislature, Regular Session, 2007) authorized the creation of…

A unilateral decision was made by the Office of the Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, the Office of Academic Outreach and Support, and the Office of Academic Support and Retention (AS&R) to implement a pilot initiative for reporting, monitoring, and tracking excessive absenteeism during the Spring semester 2003. A…

To help students learn to navigate the information superhighway, a 2-hour pilot program with 10 hours of guided access time was developed to test a method for teaching the basics of maneuvering the superhighway and extracting information once located. This pilot was designed as a two-part instructional session. The first instructional session…

In response to the recommendations of the New Jersey Special Education Study Commission and input from parents, educators, and the general public, the New Jersey Department of Education's Division of Special Education developed "A Plan To Revise Special Education in New Jersey" (1986), commonly called P2R. P2R calls for changes in the…

A pilot validity study was conducted of the use of eighth-grade language arts portfolios for ninth-grade English placement decisions (academic or general) in a school district that consists of a city and an independent borough. Portfolios offered an opportunity to collect and examine multiple measures of performance for decisions previously made…

Although portfolio assessment is becoming increasingly popular, it may not survive unless portfolio scoring can meet the demands of large-scale assessment standards. The results of studies of interrater reliability with large-scale portfolio assessments have been mixed. This paper reports the scoring results of a nationwide portfolio pilot in…

The California Community Colleges (CCC) has implemented a prototype model for determining student transfer readiness as a primary means of assessing community college transfer effectiveness. This report provides definitions of transfer readiness and guidelines for colleges participating in the CCC transfer readiness study. First, a memorandum from…

A model of integrated training within the context of Australia's vehicle industry certificate (VIC) was developed, tested, and evaluated through six different pilot programs in different enterprises across Australia's automotive industry. The pilot programs' primary objective was to provide access to and ensure successful participation in…

A desire to raise student achievement levels is leading many educators and parents to work for restructuring and reforming U.S. schools. One of the many areas in which this effort is proving to be complex is the question of changing college admission criteria to respond to the changes in curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment that are occurring at…

This paper describes a framework for authentic instruction and assessment for the New York state alternative program of integrated mathematics, science, and technology (MST). The paper includes the rationale for the assessment framework, description of tasks, students' work, and suggested evaluation scheme. The MST framework consists of seven…

Rural counties are among both the most and the least ethnically diverse, conditions that offer different but equally compelling rationales for multicultural education. Diverse communities need to acknowledge their cultural wealth, creating community structures that respect differences and build on the strengths of each culture. Homogeneous…