In recent years, educators have begun to use learning portfolios as a means of evaluating student learning in higher education. Research indicates that learning portfolios can help students understand better the learning process as well as enhancing learning outcomes. They promote reflection on the learning experience and encourage students to…

Current statistics reveal a dramatic increase in households where grandparents are raising their grandchildren. Issues facing these families affect learning outcomes for the grandchildren; therefore, there are diverse implications for schools in dealing with grandparent-headed households. Schools can address areas of communication in grandparent…

College students who are no longer fully adolescent and not yet fully adult are frequently at risk for developing habits of excessive alcohol use, with consequent poor study habits and aberrant socialization patterns. "Weeding out" such trends is the work of prevention programs on campus. "Seeding" with other pro-social norms becomes the second…

This paper argues that in the pursuit of influencing inclusive education development, definitions of inclusion have been promulgated that remain a distant concept in the minds of the most significant partners in this process, i.e. teachers and schools. This is despite best efforts to share ideas for sustainable change based on such definitions.…

For the past two decades, China's economy has grown rapidly, averaging an astonishing 9 percent every year. One result of this growth has been the demand for more and better educational opportunities at the postsecondary level. In response, the Chinese government, which holds a tight control over its highly centralized education system, introduced…

The design, implementation, and evaluation of the second phase in a two-year faculty development initiative by the Southeastern Pennsylvania Consortium on Higher Education (SEPCHE) is presented. The initiative addressed instruction of SEPCHE faculty in the use of technology in college teaching. Six workshops were conducted for faculty in specific…

To teach students how to become contributing members of society, Park View High School in Sterling, Virginia, focuses on collaboration, diversity, and volunteerism. Since developing leaders is part of being a community of collaboration, a curricular component supports its efforts to model the kind of leadership it wants its students to develop. To…

In October 2002, Sebastian River High School in Florida developed a literacy system that includes all faculty and staff members. The literacy system identifies roles, responsibilities, and actions for everyone, including daily literacy-related nonnegotiables for all teachers. Now, students who have a history of failure are posting gains of one…

If teachers and parents genuinely believe that it is educators' responsibility to prepare students for a life of "meeting employers' needs," then teachers have to better examine what it is that they choose to teach students. That is, what should be in the curriculum to ensure that students have the knowledge to prepare them for a life of…

Representatives of business, industry, and education have long perceived a gap between students' existing skills and those needed in the workplace. To address this problem, a strong movement toward adopting voluntary skill standards is now seen within career and technical education (CTE). In this article, the author discusses how addressing skill…

School-based professional development has been promoted by the government in England through its Continuing Professional Development Strategy (DfEE, 2001), however, the context and culture of the school in which the learning takes place is highly influential. Particularly important in teachers' professional development within secondary education…

Nestled in the valley between the Berkshire hills and the Taconic range, North Adams, Massachusetts, in many ways is typical of old New England mill towns working hard to create a new identity in the global economy. When Sprague Electric left town in 1985, the city of 16,000 reeled from the loss of 4,000 blue-collar jobs. This article describes…

As state coffers continue to shrink this year, there is less money for education, and much of what is available is earmarked for mandates. Yet the money is out there if one knows how to find, create, or borrow it; the trick is to be creative. In this article, the author offers a dozen daring ideas for generating extra cash. The highest-profile…

In the last five years, a growing number of large, urban school districts have moved to close what are termed "troubled" 6-8 middle schools and have opened K-8 schools in their place: Boston, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Newark, New Orleans, New York City, Oklahoma City, and Philadelphia have been among the first to do…

This study applied an early screening approach to determine the risk status of children in 5 urban schools and monitor their patterns of reading growth over 3 years. A majority of students were from culturally diverse and low-SES backgrounds. Two validated instruments were used for determining (a) academic risk (the Dynamic Indicators of Basic…