Presents a rationale for including life planning in career guidance programs, describing how each of the following is served by life planning: counseling, assessment, credential portfolios, career and labor market information, employability skills, and work experience. Outlines elements of a comprehensive career and life planning program. (SK)

Describes several successful community-oriented primary care (COPC) projects conducted by the Health Partners Family Practice Residency Program and outlines eight lessons learned from these projects. The experiences of these projects show that COPC development is a long and slow process that provides many rewards during implementation. (SLD)

Highlights the roles and responsibilities that leaders must assume in administrating and guiding a character education program in a school or school district. Discusses some leadership strategies and concludes that without a strong leader, a character education program will fade away. (Author/JDM)

Revisits an April 2000 article questioning the relevance and efficacy of Instructional Systems Design (ISD) and comes back to the question of whether ISD is flawed or is the manner in which people are putting ISD into practice the problem. (JOW)

Presents five steps to develop sustainable community programs: (1) grant writing and planning; (2) program startup; (3) plan refinement; (4) program expansion and improvement; and (5) program transitions and sustainability. Describes the critical tasks, skills, core questions, and feedback loops essential at each stage. (SK)

Discusses the effectiveness of mentoring programs in reducing the dropout rate and helping students avoid drugs and alcohol. Describes Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America, the nation's oldest and largest youth mentoring program. Includes 16 steps for setting up a school-based mentoring program. (JOW)

Articulates how the family support movement emerged in the last 20 years, and describes the philosophical premises, principles, and practices that currently guide it. Considers the inability of current family support program typologies to guide outcome evaluations, and introduces a typology that deconstructs family support programs into their…

An appropriate education is one that identifies students' educational needs and then provides a curriculum that addresses those needs (Benbow & Stanley, 1996). All students, even those identified as gifted, deserve a personalized education. However, many educators outside gifted education believe that "giftedness" is a fancy label and that gifted…

Describes the development of the International Development Evaluation Association (IDEAS) and the context in which it will operate. This new wing of the international evaluation architecture has been designed to support development evaluators in tackling professional changes of the new century. (SLD)

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) program is an oral assessment designed to measure the most basic foundation skills for literacy acquisition in the early grades. EGRA's purpose is to document student performance on early grade reading skills in order to inform ministries…

Online learning is a complex undertaking that holds great potential as a teaching and learning mode that public colleges and universities may strategically employ to achieve broad institutional priorities and contribute to the attainment of national goals. The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities- (APLU) Sloan National Commission on…

Over the past 20 years, home visitation has emerged as the flagship program through which many states and communities are reaching out to new parents.The presence of bills to advance home visitation in Congress and in state and local legislatures, and the fact that several states and counties are moving forward with comprehensive plans and…

This policy analysis project is designed at uncovering specific standards that can be utilized by a school district in developing and evaluating their Type II Alternative Schools to ensure high levels of student success within their programs. While there is a substantive body of research in alternative education, there are no universally accepted…

We developed equivalent, alternate forms of easyCBM[R] in reading (n=20 forms) and mathematics (n=13 forms) with different skills reflective of the National Reading Panel (NRP) and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), respectively. We then took three forms to use as screening measures in the fall, winter, and spring so educators…

In this article, we share how a professional development school (PDS) partnership between several elementary school sites within a district and an institution of higher education prepares special education teacher candidates. The following challenges are identified for PDS stakeholders: recruiting qualified special education mentor teachers,…