The success of the United States in the 21st century will depend on the ideas and skills of its population. These have always been the nation's most important assets. As the world becomes increasingly technological, the value of these national assets will be determined by the effectiveness of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics…

This two-part "Implementation Guide" will help to deepen your understanding and sharpen your ability to implement each of the strategies discussed in "Leading School Change: Nine Strategies to Bring Everybody on Board" (ED509821). Part One offers discussion questions and activities which focus on each of the nine strategies. They can be completed…

Teacher leaders are teachers who aspire to stretch beyond their classrooms to engage in leadership roles that take many shapes and forms, both "informal" and "formal". These teachers view the school as a whole, see the "big picture" and focus on how they can help improve aspects of the school to result in increases in…

The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education and the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning are pleased to announce the winner of the 2010 Virginia B. Smith Innovative Leadership Award, Julie M. Phelps. Phelps is a professor of mathematics at Valencia Community College who teaches and has studied and refined three types of…

Countries that begin implementing the Intel[R] Teach to the Future Essentials course after March of 2006 are required to collect data using the Intel[R] Teach Essentials End of Training Survey to help support program improvement. This End of Training evaluation toolkit provides guidelines on: (1) End of Training Survey administration; (2) The…

High-quality care is essential to the optimal development of young children. While many children attend childcare away from the home for an average of six hours per day, the environment is not necessarily of the highest quality. An assessment of the indoor and outdoor space, curriculum and activities, teacher and child interactions, materials,…

The value of identifying permanent hearing loss during the first few months of life and providing effective treatment to ameliorate or even eliminate the negative consequences has been recognized for many decades. Unfortunately, improvements in achieving this goal were very gradual until the early 1990s. At that time, the combination of…

The Division for Early Childhood (DEC) of the Council for Exceptional Children is a professional association whose responsibility is to develop and disseminate standards of practice related to young children with special needs and their families. The intention is to identify practices that result in high-quality early intervention/early childhood…

In May 1993, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board formed the Task Force on Institutional Effectiveness (TFIE) to develop a state-level evaluation and continuous improvement plan for community and technical college (CTC) workforce education and academic programs. This report presents the plan for utilizing data collected on CTC's in three…

Responding to concerns that charter schools do not provide equal access to students with disabilities, advocates in districts, states, and courts across the country have sought to improve such access. Adding to these concerns, the U.S. Government Accountability Office recently released a report showing that charter schools, on average, serve a…

The passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), also known as the economic stimulus package, provided an extra $3 billion for school improvement grants (SIGs) under section 1003(g) of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Along with this funding increase, the U.S. Department of Education issued guidance…

This article describes a new paradigm for accountability that envisions afterschool programs as learning organizations continually engaged in improving quality. Nearly 20 years into the era of results-based accountability, a new generation of afterschool accountability systems is emerging. Rather than aiming to test whether programs have produced…

Kansas City (Missouri) Public Schools is at a crossroads. The district has struggled for decades with poor academic achievement, dwindling enrollment and budget, and short-term superintendents--27 in the past 40 years. Most recently, after a two-year stint during which he helped the district get its financial house in order, closing nearly half of…

Over the past decade, human performance technology (HPT) has become an important source of rigor and application in support of best practices in capacity development. HPT shares common principles with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development best practices. This article explores HPT's critical role as the methodology of choice…

The reluctance to design and teach online courses in higher education is often attributed to technology anxiety in faculty. This article documents a faculty development model that has successfully helped faculty overcome this obstacle. "Bootcamps," faculty development programs held at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI, were specifically and…