This instructional unit was built upon the idea that most of the children from a second and a sixth grade classroom already had some knowledge about the social history of their community in Loveland, Colorado. The teachers implementing the unit helped these students make connections between the past and present and thereby develop an understanding…

The first wave of school improvement, largely perceived later as a failure, responded to Sputnik-era fears the United States was falling behind other nations, and focused on minor reforms of the educational system. Larry Cuban distinguishes the first-order changes of the first wave from the more fundamental changes implied in second wave efforts.…

This paper compares and analyzes preschool mathematics education in Singapore and India in terms of strategies, learning activities, teacher expectations, and parental involvement. The paper describes the mathematics curriculum of one school in Erode, India, including teaching methods, and in Singapore. The results of a parent survey in each…

Noting that many factors can influence the extent to which families are engaged in their children's education, this study examined the influence of family and school barriers as potential barriers to parent involvement. The sample was taken from a local site of the National Head Start/Public School Transition Demonstration Project. Participants…

Even after children enter school, parents continue to be the most important adult influence on their lives. This booklet, directed to parents, contains more than 40 ways that parents can work with their child's school to support their child's learning. The suggestions are organized in several sections: (1) "Parent Involvement: The 3 V's,"…

This guidebook is intended for parents of French-speaking students in Alberta. It describes French-as-a-first-language education in Alberta and provides information to help parents, in collaboration with school personnel and the wider francophone community in Alberta, to preserve and develop their children's identity as speakers of French and as…

This 37-minute videotape recording demonstrates selected interventions to assist infants and toddlers with multiple disabilities, including vision and hearing loss, in developing early communication and other skills. Emphasizing the critical importance of early intervention, the video is designed to help service providers and families create…

This paper describes two collaborative projects conducted with graduate students from Texas A&M University-Commerce and West Texas A&M University during the fall semesters of 1997 and 1998. The instructors, with a history of personal collaboration both in person and online, designed an activity to provide their graduate students with the…

This descriptive study has two phases. The first phase describes the mechanism for online collaboration. The second phase quantifies collaborative interaction. The coding design was partially based on ProjectH, a research study from 1992-94 involving a large number of collaborators from several countries who worked together to study worldwide…

In 1998, the British Columbia Teachers' Federation (BCTF) appointed an eight-member task force to investigate the effectiveness of the education system for First Nations students. The task force report and recommendations are intended to serve several groups of Aboriginal students: First Nations students, with or without status under Canada's…

This report examines the experiences of secondary school students in the former City of Toronto inside and outside of school using data from the 1997 Every Secondary Student Survey. Student experiences are looked at within the context of their demographic backgrounds. In 1997, almost half the students were nonnative speakers of English,…

This paper synthesizes information from the March 2000 report, "Increasing the Participation of Special Needs Students in NAEP" (National Assessment of Educational Progress). Background information includes the development of the NAEP program since 1969 and the 1996 development of criteria to guide schools in deciding on the…

As part of ongoing research into rural school improvement, the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory (NCREL) at the request of its Rural Advisory Council set out to find, examine, and profile exemplary, successful school improvement programs in rural schools and districts in the upper Midwest. This paper is a summary of the first year…

It is now recognized that neither the Civilian Conservation Corps nor an individual camp can operate efficiently without an effective guidance program. Its results are directly reflected in the morale of the corps, the efficiency of its administration, and the amount and quality of the work accomplishments. Kirkland Sloper, adviser in Company 127,…

The Texas Study of Students at Risk (TxSSAR) is a comprehensive evaluation examining the effectiveness of three state-level programs with the common goal of helping students at risk of failure to achieve academically. The study comprises investigations of the Optional Extended Year Program (OEYP), the Texas After School Initiative (TASI), and the…