This study reveals the challenges confronting small, rural "frontier" schools in Montana and the practices that contribute to their sustainability. A Montana frontier school is defined as a school district with 200 or fewer students and its attendant community in a county with five or fewer people per square mile. The researcher…

The broad array of data presented each year in the "KIDS COUNT Data Book" is intended to illuminate the status of America's children and to assess trends in their well-being. By updating the assessment every year, KIDS COUNT provides ongoing benchmarks that can be used to see how states have advanced or regressed over time. Readers can also use…

Using fiscal data provided by the finance office of the school district, and personnel data obtained from the California Basic Education Data System maintained by the California Department of Education (CDE), the authors present analyses to provide a foundation for local policymakers that may be used to assess whether there are inequities in the…

The "ISSS Annual Conference Proceedings" is a peer-reviewed professional publication published once a year following the annual conference. (Individual papers contain references.) [For the 2010 proceedings, see ED509647.]

Elementary general music teachers typically teach hundreds of students every week. Each child has individual learning needs due to a variety of factors, such as prior experiences with music, music aptitude, learning style, and personality. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore ways that experienced teachers used assessments to…

The powerful, reciprocal connection between school and housing segregation has long been recognized. The housing-school link was a key element in both the 1968 Kerner Commission Report and in the legislative history of the Fair Housing Act. The relation of school and housing segregation was also explored in a series of school desegregation cases…

The for-profit education management industry has, based on the available data, entered a period of relative stability. The industry's actual condition, however, is more difficult to determine than ever. This is because companies that dominate the industry are privately held and do not have to provide information to the public that they choose not…

This report discusses professional development projects that are currently funded by the Improving Teacher Quality (ITQ) State Grants Program, including representative projects that will be presented to the Commission at the June meeting. In addition, the ITQ program has recently released a Request for Proposals (RFP) for grants that serve early…

This annual report of the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) contains an overview of activities of the Council between July 1, 2006 and June 30, 2007. These include programs, awards, publications, advisory groups, grants and contracts, and financial statements. It also includes a list of staff, a letter from the chairperson Paula…

Researchers have begun tracking a group of high ability high school students from high school into college study. These students indicated an interest in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) content areas, and specifically ocean sciences, through participation in a regional or national academic competition in high school--The…

A new report finds that all states and the District of Columbia have now ushered in new English-language-proficiency tests to comply with No Child Left Behind Act requirements for those still learning the language. The report, "English Language Proficiency Assessment in the Nation: Current Status and Future Practice," released by the University of…

Writing and publishing a research paper in a peer-reviewed journal is a complicated process. This paper tries to take some of the mystery out of that process by describing how a good research paper should be structured, and how the journal submission process works.

Monitoring and reporting on the well-being of children has a central role to play in the development of policies to improve children's lives. This paper uses two reports on child well-being--the State of London's Children Reports--as exemplars to show how regular reporting on children can be linked to planning and policy-making in an urban…

Although report cards may seem to be a clear-cut means of communication between teachers and parents, on closer examination they reveal a more complicated interaction. Parents of fourth-graders are interviewed about their children's report cards to learn their understandings of the language and discuss expectations for their children in school. A…

Use of evaluation findings is a valued outcome for most evaluators. However, to optimize use, the findings need to be disseminated to potential users in formats that facilitate use of the information. This reflective case narrative uses a national evaluation of a multisite National Science Foundation (NSF) program as the setting for describing the…