A study of the effects of a pre-freshman summer session on the academic, personal, and social development and retention of a group of Black Clemson University students found no better academic performance or retention than for a control group, suggesting that the program's assumptions were flawed or inadequate. (MSE)

Means of fostering utilization of educational evaluations are reviewed. Four ongoing educational evaluation programs were examined: (1) Florida Summer Institute Program; (2) Chapter I Reading Microcomputer Component; (3) Elementary Academically Gifted Program; and (4) Laboratory for Individualized Foundation Teaching. The addition of one factor…

In a 2-week course designed to give information about and experience with gifted students, 36 regular education teachers gained knowledge of educational diagnosis and assessment, instructional methodology, the characteristics of gifted students, and professional responsibilities as determined by pretest and posttest scores on the Clark Assessment…

This article presents a discussion of field utilization of staff development activities in the context of three separate training programs. Specifically, classroom implementation of knowledge and skills gained by participants in their training sessions was assessed via the Levels of Use (LoU) interview system. (Author/LMO)

This article describes computer literacy staff development activities conducted at the East Windsor (New Jersey) Regional School District. The program has featured mini-grants for teachers, summer programs for students, and interdistrict training. (PP)

Summarized are the development, operation and outcomes of a successful summer agricultural work experience course for high school students. (MS)

In an increasingly competitive information age and creative economy, knowledge and skills in the arts and music are important in their own right. Additionally, the integration of the arts into after-school programs helps build and reinforce important student learning. It helps strengthen teamwork, responsibility, persistence, self-discipline, and…

This issue brief looks at evaluations of 34 academically focused summer programs in order to distill challenges and compile promising strategies for creating quality summer programs. While many summer programs face similar implementation challenges, each program has different components and needs, and not every strategy is feasible or even…

This final report describes activities and accomplishments of a 3-year federally supported personnel preparation program at Stephen F. Austin University (Texas) to train graduate-level personnel to serve children and youth with serious emotional disturbance and autism (SED/A). The program was designed to recruit, train, and seek employment in…

This booklet presents suggestions for things people can do to help meet the America Reads Challenge of having all children read well and independently by the end of third grade. One of the ways to meet this challenge is through the research-based community reading initiative, called READ*WRITE*NOW!, which encourages students to read and write at…

A summer reading program can be designed to attract not just those teenagers who love to read, but also nonreaders who have yet to experience the joy of reading. This book gathers from library literature and previously unpublished accounts of recent programs and provides information about different kinds of summer reading programs designed…

The Interdisciplinary Teamed Instruction (ITI) Project was a 2-year project aimed at determining the effects of ITI on teaching and learning and at validating the effectiveness of a professional development model to facilitate development, implementation, and evaluation of ITI. Through summer institutes and onsite workshops, project staff provided…

Students engage in a variety of activities during their summer vacations that provide them with educational opportunities. In the summer of 1996, 9% of students in grades 1 through 12 attended summer school, and 38% participated in other organized summer activities. Among the students who were enrolled in grades 8 through 12, 26% worked for pay…

This paper examines two sections of split-level educational psychology classes that were introduced at a large public university in the Midwest in the summer of 1999. Approximately half of the students enrolled in the classes were traditional undergraduate educational psychology students, and the other half consisted of practicing teachers who…

The Exit Skills Summer Learning Academies of the Detroit Public Schools, Michigan, were created to provide additional instruction to students in kindergarten and grades one through five who did not master specific objectives during the regular school year. A total of 174 schools participated in the 1998-1999 Exit Skills Summer Learning Academies,…