The 1987-1988 Project SPIRIT programs were evaluated for effectiveness from the points of view of the participants, both parents and children. An initiative of the Congress of National Black Churches that was begun in the summer of 1986, Project SPIRIT aims to nurture children's strength, perseverance, imagination, responsibility, integrity, and…

This report, along with its supplemental volumes, assesses the welfare system and its successes and failures, describes the frustrations felt by the poor in the United States, and proposes a basic change in public assistance policy. America's state and federal governments spend more than $150 billion a year on programs to alleviate poverty, yet…

This report provides an overview of the current welfare system. The number and size of federal public assistance programs have increased during the past 25 years, with particular growth in noncash benefit programs, which now constitute about three-quarters of all means-tested assistance. From mid-1983 to mid-1984, more than 52.5 million Americans…

Evaluation of freshman English programs is a process involving recursive steps, such as planning which elements to review, securing resources to carry out the review, actually reviewing the planned elements, and providing written reports to decision-makers. The four elements of an educational program--contexts, input, process, and product--cohere…

This report examines parent-involvement programs that focus on Hispanic families and the methods that have been used to evaluate these programs. The survey involved 10 Hispanic parent-involvement programs named by various state education agency directors as being significant. Particular attention was given to whether or not the programs were…

Stage Two of the Title IV Quality Control Project is an integrated study of quality in five related Federal financial aid programs for postsecondary students. Section 1 of the paper establishes a framework for defining quality improvements, in order to identify the types of changes that would tend to improve quality across all facets of the…

This report describes a project undertaken at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) between January 1, 1982 and March 31, 1984, which was designed to increase the use in program assessment and in program improvement of information derived from measures of: (1) student achievement in general education; (2) student achievement in the major…

A self-administered questionnaire about practices and attitudes toward vocational special needs (VSN) students was distributed to a sample of 245 secondary industrial education (IE) teachers in seven central states (Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wyoming). Analysis of 135 returns (55 percent) found moderately…

A serious problem in home study in recent years has been that, too often, some schools have been paying little attention to student services. They have concentrated their budgets on advertising to recruit new students, while doing little to encourage present students or new recruits to stay in the program. Efforts have been made to reduce the…

This monograph aims to provide a blueprint for: (1) expanded supported employment implementation for individuals with disabilities; and (2) improvement in service delivery practices. It contains edited summaries of the discussions of five working groups from a major forum on national supported employment issues which was convened in Williamsburg,…

Over a period of 9 months, a certified Child Development Associate (CDA) trainer and charter member of the National Association of Migrant Educators implemented and evaluated a practicum intervention designed to improve the learning environments of migrant preschool children through in-service training of migrant teachers, aides, parents, and…

A study examined local and state-level collaboration between the Job Training Partnership System (JTPA) and four other programs: the Employment Service, vocational education, welfare, and economic development. Methods included telephone interviews with 46 state managing agencies for JTPA, 205 service delivery area administrators, and 209 Private…

The evolution of technical education in Argentina has not been so much a process of vocationalization of academic education as a process of secondarization of vocational education. Argentine technical schools are the product of a process of convergence among terminal trade schools, vocational schools, and industrial technological schools that has…

The basic premise of this handbook is that effective bilingual programs can occur only within a school context that is itself effective. A foreword argues that: (1) bilingual education programs must be better integrated into the mainstream of local school district programs, and (2) limited-English proficient (LEP) students should be assigned to…

In response to the need to remain a leader in teacher education in Missouri, Southeast Missouri State University analyzed a variety of sources that suggested new directions in teacher education. A review was conducted of current literature, and a study was made of the revised National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE)…