Given that the society has not been able to redistribute financial support away from day and sheltered programs, it needs to cut off the supply of consumers. To make this happen, Rusch and Braddock offered two recommendations in their study: (1) All students must leave high school either competitively employed or admitted to a postsecondary…

This report summarizes key findings from the literature on effective developmental education practice. It is designed to promote discussion among community college educators and state agency staff in Connecticut as they consider how to improve outcomes for their many students who are academically unprepared to succeed in college. One common theme…

Context and Purpose: With heightened attention to medical errors and patient safety, we surveyed Utah and Missouri hospitals to assess the "state of the art" in patient safety systems and identify changes over time. This study examines differences between urban and rural hospitals. Methods: Survey of all acute care hospitals in Utah and…

To enable improvements in school health promotion, this paper examines associations between the number of health-promotion issues addressed by primary school teachers in the Netherlands and factors thought to influence this behavior. The main factors studied are context characteristics and constructs of attitude, social influence, self-efficacy…

This article describes a physical education program self-assessment tool, "The Physical Activity and Fitness Promotion Checklist," which was developed by a panel of nationally recognized physical education teachers. This checklist, which specifically addresses national physical education standards three and four, includes 20 items organized into…

A pilot study was designed to examine student perspectives on the first two years of the foreign language program at an east coast college. The study addresses key areas of foreign language teaching and learning in terms of goals and objectives, effectiveness of instruction and instructional approach, and student suggestions for improvement. The…

The Early Development Index (EDI) is a teacher-completed checklist, intended to be a population-level tool to measure children's readiness for school and to alert communities to potential developmental problems in children. In response to the increasing popularity of the EDI, this paper provides a critical and timely evaluation and identifies the…

This is the fourth report of a process evaluation of Palm Beach County Prime Time, Inc., an intermediary organization dedicated to improving the quality of afterschool programs, by Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago. It covers the 2007-2008 program year, which was the inaugural year of Prime Time's formal Quality Improvement System (QIS)…

This study explores the efforts at Brigham Young University to improve preservice candidates' technology integration using the Teacher Work Sample (TWS) as an assessment tool. Baseline data that was analyzed from 95 TWSs indicated that students were predominantly using technology for productivity and information presentation purposes even though…

High-quality out-of-school-time (OST) programs have a positive effect on youth development, but many cities have found it difficult to address the challenges of expanding and improving the quality of programs offered to underserved and high-need students. In response, The Wallace Foundation sponsored an initiative to help five cities increase…

This bulletin tells how the boys and girls and staff of the elementary school at Culloden, West Virginia, recently took a critical look at their school program and decided that they ought to do something toward having more useful, interesting, and meaningful learning experiences. Accordingly, they began to develop a curriculum which was different…

The Parents Returning to Work Program (PRTW) is a Victorian government initiative which commenced in 2003. It provides grants to assist eligible parents who wish to return to paid employment after a period of caring for children to participate in training that will increase their work skills and job prospects. This evaluation aimed to review the…

Recent child welfare research has identified supervisors as key to retaining qualified and committed workers. This paper describes implementation of a federally funded child welfare training initiative designed to improve worker retention largely through developing, implementing, and evaluating a statewide supervisor training program in a…

This study assessed the attitudes of three groups that participated in Upward Bound, a newly instituted academic advisory program at Tomball High School in Texas. It also provided a baseline of data to measure students' academic performance. The three groups, 300 high school freshmen, 115 of their parents, and 33 full time faculty, responded to…

These hearing transcripts present testimony concerning the quality and availability of child care in the United States, focusing on ways to improve the quality of home-based child care. Much of the testimony addressed the need to provide increased educational and training opportunities for home-based child care providers and to better regulate and…