Findings of a study that explored parents' views of education and their evaluations of their school's success are presented in this paper. The parents represented families involved in a Follow Through program, a federally sponsored education program that serves low-income children in kindergarten and the primary grades who had been enrolled in…

This report is a staff review of an evaluation, conducted by the Carrera Consulting Group, of Project ASSIST (Articulation System Stimulating Interinstitutional Student Transfer), a program designed to facilitate the transfer of students at California community colleges to California State University and the University of California by providing…

This report, the first in a series of six, was developed during Phase II of California's Educational Technology Programs. School-based educational technology projects that were assessed for the study were funded in 1989-90 and implemented in 1990-91. The results from the following staff-developed assessment instruments and evaluation procedures…

The 1994-95 school year was the first year of the MECA (Manufacturing, Engineering, Construction, Automotive) partnership implementation in the Saginaw (Michigan) Public Schools. MECA's purpose was to nurture the potential of youth while placing them in workplace environments that had not been a traditional part of applied learning in secondary…

An evaluation of a school reform project in one kindergarten through grade 5 school in Atlanta (Georgia) is presented to demonstrate how triangulation of qualitative and quantitative evaluation approaches can enhance understanding of a reform effort. During the 1991-92 school year, the final year of the project, Fowler Drive Elementary School…

The Associate Program for Adjunct Faculty (APAF) at the College of the Canyons (CC) in Valencia, California, includes efforts to increase instructional quality by increasing the incidence of good teaching practices among part-time instructors. As part of a project to evaluate the APAF and to determine the involvement of adjunct faculty in the…

The Thinking Mathematics project, a joint effort of the American Federation of Teachers and the Learning Research and Development Center, had the primary objective of developing more efficient means of disseminating new knowledge about mathematics learning and instruction. The resulting practitioner-researcher collaboration developed an…

A critical challenge facing educators today is meeting the needs of culturally diverse school populations. Since 1989, Mississippi State University has provided a summer institute, Strategies for Instructing Culturally Diverse Students, in which selected Mississippi elementary and secondary teachers have identified strategies for addressing the…

A study was done of the efficacy of Project Reach, an alternative school program for seriously at-risk students attending the Socorro High School in the Socorro Independent School District (Texas). Program participants were those who had reached the pre-expulsion stage prior to admission. The program goals were to prevent dropouts or expulsions…

This report examines the Chapter 1 program's impact at school and classroom levels, strategic directions for Chapter 1 reauthorization, the larger context of school poverty as it influences Chapter 1 delivery, the operation and effectiveness of Chapter 1, and new directions for improving Chapter 1 in line with national reforms. How well Chapter 1…

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it describes "Teachers for Chicago" (TFC), an alternative entry program into the teaching profession aimed specifically at developing teachers for urban schools. Second, it examines how novice teachers in the program were influenced by university coursework, mentor teachers, and the…

A study examined statewide implementation of the Arizona Department of Education's vocational technological education (ADE/VTE) model and the feasibility of using Arizona's performance standards in evaluating processes/outcomes at model sites. Data were collected from a pilot study of 12 sites and survey of 128 Arizona local education authorities…

This paper reports the findings of the first annual evaluation of the Full Service Schools Grant of the Family Services Center in Gainesville, Florida. The Family Services Center is a coordinated effort among local, state, and federal agencies to provide integrated health, education, and social services to qualified families who may require a…

Researchers and program evaluators would often like to use a particular instrument, but do not because it is too long or would require too much testing time. Having a validated set of objective procedures for reducing the size of an instrument could improve many research and evaluation efforts. This paper reports the results of test reduction or…

Specific goals of this study of the national dropout problem are to: (1) define the problem; (2) identify demographic characteristics of dropouts; (3) describe economic and social consequences; (4) identify programs and practices that prevent students from dropping out; (5) identify federal and state initiatives; and (6) identify private sector…