What follows in this report is a comprehensive Five-Year Action Plan that, when implemented, will put Baltimore City on the road to making real and measurable gains in the school readiness of its youngest children, from birth to age five. The purpose in developing this plan is to identify the specific strategies and their associated action …

The Council of the Great City Schools, the nation's primary coalition of large urban public school systems, has prepared this report to summarize its recommendations to the District of Columbia about improving student achievement in its public schools. Specifically, the Council was asked to determine why reading and math achievement in the DC…

Universal design for assessments is an approach to educational assessment based on principles of accessibility for a wide variety of end users. Elements of universal design include inclusive test population; precisely defined constructs; accessible, non-biased items; tests that are amenable to accommodations; simple, clear and intuitive…

History suggests that a nation that relinquishes the torch of science puts its future prosperity at risk and jeopardizes its place in the history of civilization. The National Science Board believes this fate must not be allowed to befall the country. The National Science Board 2020 Vision for the National Science Foundation (NSF) provides a…

The child care industry has not been fully integrated into economic development activities despite its growing importance in the economy. This is, in large part, because child care is not usually thought of as an element of economic development. As a result, states in the North Central region are not maximizing the economic benefits from quality,…

This issue of the Emergency Response and Crisis Management (ERCM) Technical Assistance Center's "ERCMExpress" promotes emergency exercises as an effective way to validate school safety plans. Simulations of emergency situations, or emergency exercises, are integral to a sound school safety plan. They offer opportunities for district and schools to…

In 1998, Congress amended the Higher Education Act (HEA) and established the Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) as a performance-based organization. The Act called for the FSA to develop 5-year plans annually, issue annual reports, and consult with stakeholders regarding the program delivery system. The General Accounting Office (GAO) initiated a…

This document is a chapter in "The Principles and Practice of Educational Management," which aims to provide a systematic and analytical introduction to the study of educational management. The structure of the book reflects the main substantive areas of educational leadership and management, and most of the major themes are covered in the…

This paper presents a set of recommendations from the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges that can be applied by local academic senates as they create and improve their local planning and budget processes. Recommendations include: (1) planning should drive budgeting, never the reverse; (2) planning, in an academic context, should be…

This report examines school district planning models in South Carolina. It focuses on three questions: (1) Of those school districts conducting some type of systematic planning, how many are producing strategic plans? Long-range plans? Accountability reports? (2) In those same districts, how many are preparing adequate program-management…

This book examines the postwar building boom in higher education, describing the diverse approaches to the creation of new campuses in the United States, England, Canada, West Germany, and France and exploring the range of responses to "utopian dreams" from students, academia, and the public. The chapters are: (1) "USA: Campus vs.…

This document presents Cabrillo College's (California) master plan for 2001 to 2004. Major steps in compiling the master plan included: conducting environmental scanning, making planning assumptions, establishing goals, identifying objectives, developing strategies, and evaluating the plan. The plan is based on six broad goals: (1) to enable…

Over the last 20 years, K-12 schools have spent millions of dollars equipping their schools with the latest technologies, but often without a thoughtful plan of how their use would impact learning and teaching. What is important is how the technology is integrated with the instructional program. To ensure that technology dollars have an impact on…

This dissertation is based on the ideas that: (1) metaphor is essential to the conception of and life in organizations; (2) the dominant organizational metaphor of life within universities, particularly from an administrative perspective, is Newtonian/mechanical; and (3) a metaphoric perspective grounded in chaos theory might be helpful in…

This booklet provides guidance for implementing a standards policy in North Carolina. In 1997, the Committee on Standards and Accountability was created by the North Carolina General Assembly to advise the State Board of Education on a policy for student performance standards. The committee was charged with considering standards for promotion for…