The Community College Survey of Student Engagement ("CCSSE") this year celebrates five years of helping community colleges better serve their students. With its unrelenting focus on using data to improve students' educational experiences, "CCSSE" has established itself as a leading voice in community college improvement efforts. More important,…

This study examined differences in nine factors between a group of the highest-performing needs high schools (HPHN) and a group of the lowest performing high-needs (LPHN) high schools using teacher responses from a national dataset. The factors are: (1) shared mission and goals; (2) professional development; (3) collaboration among teachers (4)…

Implicated in contributing to the problems youth today face in trying to claim an education, an informed active participation in the social order, dominant discourses of desire in education foreclose formal, critical analysis of social structures that construct, police, entreat, and deny desire. Looking at the ways in which desire is encoded in…

Early childhood is a time of remarkable transformation and extreme vulnerability. Programmes that support young children during the years before they go to primary school provide strong foundations for subsequent learning and development. Such programmes also compensate for disadvantage and exclusion, offering a way out of poverty. This Report…

Spurred by federal and state mandates for improved performance, school districts across the country have become adept at establishing districtwide goals to raise student achievement. They have identified learning gaps among various student populations and now seek to close them. They have targeted improved performance in reading or math by grade…

There has been very little previous evaluation research that examines the effects of interventions on persistence.

This study examined childhood gender atypicality, lifetime victimization based on sexual orientation, and current mental health, including trauma symptoms and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), among 528 lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth. Nearly 80% reported verbal victimization, 11% physical, and 9% sexual, with males reporting significantly…

The authors interviewed 25 lesbians with physical disabilities about their counseling experiences. Using a phenomenological qualitative approach, the authors identified 9 themes. Five themes addressed participants' perceptions of their counselors: general satisfaction or dissatisfaction, counselors' general effectiveness, counselors' awareness and…

This study used data from a national survey of homosexual and bisexual public school teachers to explore differences among participants in rural, suburban, and urban schools. A survey was sent to 1,350 participants through national, state, and urban based gay teacher organizations. Of those sampled, 904 responded. Findings included the following:…

An information guide for people who help newcomers to Canada, this book helps second language teachers plan the content of their courses, and makes it easier for settlement agency workers to respond to newcomers' needs. The method it advocates is question and answer, with the newcomer asking the questions. The ultimate goal of the book is to…

This text introduces the concepts of Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) and shows how they can be used in the classroom. A quality classroom is defined as one in which everyone in the class knows the objectives of the class and adopts a quality philosophy to continuously improve the work done to meet those objectives. The general principles and…

This report is a product of a 3-year federally funded project examining model education programs for postsecondary students with disabilities funded since 1980 by the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services. The study sought to identify and share information about strategies of successful projects and exemplary products. Chapter 1…

This practicum paper sets out a leadership development action plan (LDAP) at Mount Vernon Nazarene College (MVNC) in Ohio intended to help the director of retention and academic services in efforts to improve preparedness and readiness levels of prospective students at the school, a church-related coeducational college of arts and science. The…

The practicum reported here addressed the difficulty some newly-immigrated Spanish-speaking, limited-English-proficient high school students experience in adjusting to a new culture, putting them at risk of dropping out of school. A program was designed for this population in a suburban high school with a substantial and increasing immigrant…

This handbook introduces the reader to the National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS) research project and the various data sets that comprise the NLS. It is designed to assist readers in making an informed decision on whether the NLS is an appropriate data source for their research needs and to provide additional resources for those who desire more…