Lately educators are hearing more about full-service community schools, which pair schools with other community resources in pursuit of the long-term goal of improving academic performance. (These full-service schools are differentiated from the community day schools that serve expelled students.) The focus on academics is what makes today's…

This article describes part of a transition process in teacher education in Trinidad and Tobago. After assisting the University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT) in the development of a four-year Bachelor of Education program that replaced the previous system of two-year in-service training at Teachers College, I describe the contested, complex process…

Comparing the nation's populations health problems with high school graduation rates may seem like a stretch, but just as obesity poses a real threat to the nation's future, so does the inability to graduate students who are career and college ready. Reversing the trend of obesity will take time and so will the goal of graduating all students from…

Background: This article reviews challenges to collaboration in school mental health (SMH) and presents practical strategies for overcoming them. Methods: The importance of collaboration to the success of SMH programs is reviewed, with a particular focus on collaboration between school- and community-employed professionals. Challenges to effective…

Deficient urban schooling remains one of America's most pressing--and stubborn--public policy problems. This important new book details and evaluates a radical and promising new approach to K-12 education reform. "Strife and Progress" explains for a broad audience the "portfolio strategy" for providing urban education--its…

The public charter school movement has grown rapidly in the 20 years since the first public charter school opened in 1992, with over 5,600 schools now serving more than two million students. One of the most exceptional developments within the first two decades of the movement has been the rise of high performing public charter schools with…

A fundamental factor in the internal dynamics of a college is its culture. Central to understanding organizational culture is to minimize the occurrence and consequences of cultural conflict and help foster the development of shared goals. Modifying organizational culture is important. Without culture change, there is little hope of enduring…

The College Assessment for Learning Program (CALP) was initiated in order to improve student learning outcomes and to strengthen professional conversations across three campuses. It was based on a backward mapping process developed earlier at one of the junior campuses with successful outcomes. Analysis of NAPLAN, School Certificate and Higher…

As a result of new research and promising practice, we have more clarity than ever about how we can fundamentally transform our developmental education system to improve success for all students. To propel the movement forward, this statement offers a set of clear and actionable principles that, although not the final word on remedial education…

In view of the Bologna ministerial conference to be held in April 2012 in Bucharest, ENQA organised a seminar in September 2011 on Quality Assurance of Joint Programmes in collaboration with the Austrian Accreditation Council (OAR). The purpose of this seminar was twofold: first, to analyse the experience already gained in quality assurance of…

In 2009, Chicago witnessed 458 murders--more than the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Many of those killings involved teenagers. Kingian Nonviolence is a training curriculum developed out of the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by two of his close allies, Bernard Lafayette Jr. and David Jehnsen. Used in schools,…

In the current era of mathematics standards, whether they are Common Core State Standards or other state standards, effective vertical mathematics teams offer an opportunity for teachers to grow professionally through shared experiences, for leadership to grow among the faculty, and for the school to change its perspective on the teaching and…

Objectives: This article identifies salient components in the advancement of social work research leadership within health care. Method: Using tenets of a modified retrospective case study approach, processes and outcomes of social work research progression at a pediatric hospital are reviewed. Results: Capacity-building processes were…

The late rapper Tupac Shakur wrote a poem called "The Rose that Grew from Concrete" that serves as a good metaphor for helping educators, including school librarians, to disrupt stereotypical metanarratives they might have about urban youth and replace them with new narratives of hope, compassion, and high expectations for all students. Tupac's…

The Vision and Change effort to explore and implement needed changes in undergraduate biology education has been ongoing since 2006. It is now time to take stock of changes that have occurred at the faculty and single-course levels, and to consider how to accomplish the larger-scale changes needed at departmental and institutional levels. This…