Data from the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) were used to explore how learning environments within bilingual classes where students perform very well on the Spanish version of the TAAS are shaped by forces surrounding the TAAS and how this shaping process affects teachers. Four elementary schools were selected based on the high…

This paper describes the Professional Development Center at Fitchburg State College, one of the nine colleges of Massachusetts' system of public higher education. The Center's mission emphasizes outreach to public schools in the area. Its tenets include: principles and goals of the whole system must be described and understood before meaningful…

This paper discusses the unique challenges posed by executives in MBA (Masters of Business Administration) programs and how these challenges can be met insofar as the core information technology (IT) course is concerned, drawing on the experience of the teachers' across four programs, live and on video, over two years, involving more than 250…

During the fall of 1996, the Technical Innovations in Educational Research (TIER) laboratory at Illinois State University (ISU) initiated a followup study of a Professional Development School (PDS) begun the prior year within a local elementary school district. Researchers conducted telephone interviews with the former ISU student teachers who…

This report evaluates a project to provide a year-long English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) institute for 100 ESL literacy providers and instructors in Pennsylvania in order to enhance the skills of the participants in the institute. The ESL Institute provides an intensive 3-day summer workshop followed up by two 2-day workshops and a spring 2-day…

This document reports on state indicators for the quality of science and mathematics education in public schools and the trends in science and mathematics education as of 1999-2000, a system developed by the Council of Chief State School Officers (CSSO) in cooperation with the state departments of education, federal agencies, and professional…

This report presents guidelines for secondary school principals for including students with disabilities in large scale educational assessments. In the summer of 2001, a focus group of 13 administrators were brought together to share these promising practices for ensuring that students with disabilities participate in state and district-wide…

These case studies show how to improve the pre-service teaching experience by mentoring cooperating teachers. The case studies come from a Professional Development School (PDS) involving a large university and small secondary school. A system of "super cooperating teachers" was implemented in the PDS to accommodate all of the student teachers at…

In this paper, the researchers draw on their experience with a professional development project to propose a model for studying the formation and development of teacher community. The project described brought together 22 English and social studies teachers, as well as a Special Educator and an ESL teacher, from an urban high school for a period…

Chapter 1, "Step 1: The Change Process," focuses on the change process and describes why and how schools engage in program restructuring and resource allocation. Chapter 2, "Step 2: Defining a New Educational Strategy," discusses decisions that must be made about the regular education program and how the various schools adopted, adapted or created…

Professional development is the cornerstone of school transformation. The first part of this two-part paper describes the professional development experiences of several hundred teachers and administrators in schools implementing New American Schools (NAS) designs and discusses the links between these professional development experiences and key…

The National Association of State Directors of Special Education has established the Professional Development Leadership Academy to assist states in meeting state improvement plan requirements of the 1997 amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Professional development is crucial to this endeavor and will be accomplished…

This book presents a theoretical basis for Professional Development Schools (PDSs) as well as practical guidance for establishing, funding, and evaluating them. It offers a comprehensive view of the role that PDSs play in today's educational renewal efforts and insights about the potential that a quality PDS can bring to learning at many levels.…

A successful Web-based training (WBT) system must be highly adaptable to already existing training procedures and software in a special environment. In corporate environments internal communication and collaboration is usually standardized throughout the company. The success of a WBT system therefore mainly depends on the ability of the system to…

This qualitative study of community college faculty, based on classroom observation and interviews of 257 instructors and 60 administrators at 32 community colleges across the country, was undertaken to explore what "teaching looks like in a teaching college." The researchers were especially interested in the collective nature of teaching: the…