"Harvard Education Letter" is published bimonthly at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. This issue of "Harvard Education Letter" contains the following articles: (1) Where High Turnover Meets Low Performance: New Initiatives Target the Special Problems of Hard-to-Staff Schools (Alexander Russo); (2) Parents as Partners in School Reform:…

Incidents of violence in recent years have intensified concern about student conduct in our nation's schools, and have heightened the desire, among educators and others, to find ways of ameliorating the problem. Social science can play a supportive role, by providing insight into the origins of deviance in schools. However, while previous…

Teachers make the greatest impact on students--what they learn, how they learn it, and what they do with it. Decades of research clearly demonstrate that a quality teacher, more than any other factor, enables students to overcome obstacles to learning like poverty and can even erase the achievement gap. The problem is that many teachers lack the…

This handbook is for youth placed in foster care through local departments of social services (DSS) (not the juvenile justice system). The handbook was written for youth entering foster care for the first time as well as youth already in foster care, in the hope that youth entering or already in foster care will find the information helpful. The…

International cooperation in Distance Education which is a very popular phenomenon today can be explained by the rise of social constructivism in social sciences, namely Education and International Relations, for the purpose of this paper. Social constructive approach in International Relations with its emphasis on building social bridges via…

This report compiles the proceedings from the second national forum of the Canadian Child Care Federation, held in November 1999, which provided an opportunity for early childhood educators, practitioners, and researchers to share knowledge, learn from each other, and network with colleagues. The agenda included 4 keynote speeches, 35 workshops on…

This 40-minute video presents 10 vignettes about Latino young people reflecting on important issues as they move from high school to college and into civic engagement as leaders in their communities. The vignettes are based on composite life experiences of Latino students. The script, lyrics, and music are original compositions of Los Inocentes…

This guide is a companion to its predecessors, "Linguistically and Culturally Diverse: African American and Hmong" and "Language Sample Analysis: The Wisconsin Guide." It focuses on children from American Indian and Spanish speaking populations. It provides information pertaining to: historical background, including legal and…

Learning and training in school-based new apprenticeships (SBNAs) in Australia were examined through a survey of school-based new apprentices in Queensland, Victoria, and South Australia. Of the 2,330 questionnaires sent, 641 (27.5%) were completed. Compared with their counterparts, students undertaking SBNAs were more likely to be living outside…

Highlighting the specific as well as common characteristics of different types of parents, this volume, the third of five volumes on parenting, deals specifically with parental status and the social conditions of parenting. The volume consists of 20 chapters as follows: (1) "Mothering" (Kathryn E. Barnard and JoAnne E. Solchany); (2)…

This final report discusses the activities and outcomes of a project designed to train a cadre of school counseling students to work with culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students receiving special education services. The project was a pilot track under the Master of Science in Counselor Education, School Counseling program, at Florida…

A study explored factors contributing to the high attrition rate of Latino students in Hillsborough County (Florida) schools. Focus groups and interviews were conducted with 54 teachers; 52 high-achieving, 39 at-risk, and 6 dropout Latino middle and high school students; and 14 parents. Findings indicate that factors important to academic success…

This book discusses findings and recommendations of the Committee on Minority Representation in Special Education of the National Research Council. In chapter 1, the current study of the disproportion of minorities in special and gifted education is put into historical context. In chapter 2, an analysis of federal data on the representation of…

Although the proportion of teenagers in the labor force generally increases during economic expansions, the labor force participation rate for 16- to 19-year-olds changed very little during the exceptional labor market conditions of the mid-1990s. In July 2000, the labor force participation rate for teens was at its lowest level since 1965.…

Tuition Assistance (TA) is a military-sponsored program that reimburses military members for 75% of the tuition costs of college classes while on active duty in the hope of making military service more attractive to young people and encouraging them to remain in the military. TA's effectiveness was examined by using two models--a bivariate probit…