Looping refers to the increasingly common practice of keeping groups of students together for two or more years with the same teacher. This booklet, first in a series of "Themes in Education" provides information on the educational practice of looping and includes selected current references on the topic. The booklet outlines the history of this…

The Teaching as a New Career initiative was developed to help alleviate teacher shortages in the United States and to introduce separating, retiring, and retired military personnel to a second career in the teaching profession. This handbook provides information on the following topics: (1) requirements for teaching in elementary and secondary…

A study investigated adults' motivation for participating in Marshall University's off-campus credit education program in adult education. The 38 respondents (56 percent of those contacted) received their master's degrees during 1982-1992. Ninety-five percent of the respondents were white, and 5 percent were African-American. Seventy-four percent…

This article describes the types of nongraded elementary schools that were prevalent from the 1950s through the 1970s, reviews research on the academic achievement effects of nongraded schools, and draws inferences from this research for application of nongraded systems in today's schools. Research in which an objective measure of achievement was…

A study was done of the relation of time for individual study versus instruction time in a non-traditional, problem-based medical curriculum at the University of Limburg (Netherlands). The study collected data on 86 courses conducted in 5 consecutive academic years. In this problem-based approach, each curriculum year in the first 4 years…

This booklet provides a glimpse of the progress of vocational equity efforts in Ohio during the 1980s. It focuses on enrollment trends and the wages received by individuals who completed job training programs. It contains charts showing enrollments in 1980 and 1990 in the following major vocational technical areas: agriculture, marketing, health,…

To respond to local industry training needs, Broome Community College (BCC), in Binghamton, New York, has long provided long and short term training, workshops, seminars, and credit courses for regional companies and forged ongoing partnerships with local businesses. One such partnership has been formed with Universal Instruments (UI), a…

At a conference in 1988 the Maricopa Community Colleges (Arizona) began the process that resulted in development of the Ocotillo Action/Research Groups to study the development of educational technologies in the community college setting. This year-end report presents the following reports of the various working groups, which summarize activities…

Noting the fragile relationship between parent participation and school reform, this book tells the story of the Charquin Program, an alternative public school program in Hayward, California, dedicated to parent participation and notable for its open classroom structure and intensely democratic practice. The introduction relates the history and…

This paper reviews studies that evaluate and compare teacher education programs. Literature was sought from the "Educational Index,""Current Index to Journals in Education,""Resources in Education,""Educational Resources Information Center,""Statistical Reference Index," and U.S. Government documents. Thirty-four studies provide a framework for:…

To provide information about legal decisions on home-based private education programs, court cases decided since 1980 and the courts' analyses of constitutional issues raised during litigation are summarized. The memorandum discusses cases that involved challenges to the constitutionality of state home schooling regulations and are based on: (1)…

A 3-year, off-campus Master's degree program in human development has been implemented since 1978 in various counties in Maryland by the Department of Human Development of the University of Maryland (College Park). The main ingredient of the program is on-site, direct observation of teacher/student behavior followed up by small group sessions…

This project is a program of the Hood River Valley (Oregon) Opportunity School, a half-day alternative school attended by at-risk students. The project's objective is to teach fundamental academics through a practical experience in setting up and running a small business: the wholesale purchasing and retail mail-order sales of wildflower seeds.…

Based on a 31-question survey sent to 2,500 alternative secondary schools located across the country, this report summarizes results from the 1,200 schools responding to the questionnaire. Section 1 describes some of the structural features of alternative schools, including where they are, why they were started, organizational characteristics,…

The three papers in this report relate to the development and activities of the University of the West Indies Distance Teaching Project (UWIDITE), through which the University of the West Indies (UWI) is continuing experiments on the use of telecommunications to extend its regional services. A report to the advisory council, the first paper,…