The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) is a nonprofit organization that works collaboratively with North Carolina and 15 other member states to improve education at every level--from pre-K to postdoctoral study--through many effective programs and initiatives. SREB's "Challenge to Lead" Goals for Education, which call for the…

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 created the Reading First program to help ensure that all students could read at or above grade level by the end of grade 3. The program promotes practices recommended by the National Reading Panel for early reading instruction, highlighting essential components of reading instruction. As required by the…

Response to intervention (RTI) is a framework for providing interventions and services at increasing levels of intensity until students succeed. The framework helps teachers and schools provide instruction and interventions matched to student needs, monitor progress frequently to guide decisions about changes in instruction or goals, and apply…

The nation's child protection system (CPS) has historically focused on preventing maltreatment in high-risk families, whose children have already been maltreated. But, as Jane Waldfogel explains, it has also begun developing prevention procedures for children at lower risk--those who are referred to CPS but whose cases do not meet the criteria for…

This bimonthly newsletter provides information about the progress of the Honor States Grant Program, a governor-led effort to improve college--and work-ready graduation rates. This issue explores how effective education governance can support innovative state policy development, successful policy implementation, and a redesigned high school…

The state of Kentucky has embarked upon a large scale systems change effort to integrate Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles, including use of digital curriculum and computerized reading supports to improve overall student achievement. A major component of this initiative is the use of Read & Write Gold. As higher expectations are…

Increasing the participation of minority groups at public colleges and universities is a longstanding goal of the Board of Governors for Higher Education, as first outlined in its 1983 "Strategic Plan to Ensure Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Connecticut Public Higher Education." The minority groups defined by the plan are:…

In the process of the transformation of Russian society in the 1990s, the concept of upbringing just about disappeared from the sphere of education and youth policy in this country, as well as from the work of the mass media. The idea that labor training, patriotic indoctrination, and moral upbringing should be components of civic education, an…

Community coalitions (CCs) have labored with some difficulty to demonstrate empirical evidence of effectiveness in preventing a wide range of adolescent problem behaviors. Training and technical assistance (TA) have been identified as important elements in promoting improved functioning of CCs. A reliable, valid, and inexpensive method to assess…

To address key policy and programmatic questions and help improve student and system performance, states must work to link data across the early childhood, postsecondary and workforce (P-20/workforce) spectrum and share this information with appropriate stakeholders. This issue brief highlights current efforts in California, Florida, Indiana, and…

The National Dropout Prevention Center for Students with Disabilities (NDPC-SD) was assigned the task of compiling, analyzing and summarizing the data for Indicator 2--Dropout--from the FFY 2008 Annual Performance Reports (APRs) and the revised State Performance Plans (SPPs), which were submitted to the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP)…

"Quality Counts 2007" begins to track state efforts to create seamless education systems from early childhood to the world of work. This special issue of "Education Week" includes the following articles: (1) Improving Children's Chances (Lynn Olson); (2) Spanning a Lifetime (Christopher B. Swanson); (3) Breaking the Cycle of Poverty (Lynn Olson);…

In this article, the author presents the strategies used by Delaware to improve its schools' academic performance. In 1992, the First State was among the first states to adopt teaching standards in key academic subjects, craft tests aligned closely with those standards, and create sticks and carrots to ensure that schools use them. By the end of…

According to data from the Job Corps' Student Pay, Allotment and Management Information System (SPAMIS), approximately 54% of all individuals enrolled in the Job Corps program in 1993 received training in the state where they lived. The extent to which Job Corps participants were served in centers located within their state of residence varied…

Since 1988, considerable state and school/district energies have been devoted to implementing Re:Learning in Pennsylvania. This paper summarizes Re:Learning activities in the school district of Lancaster, in particular, McCaskey High School, which was recognized for the scope and quality of its implementation efforts. Re:Learning is a national…