Administering and supervising special education programs and personnel may be daunting tasks for school leaders. Students and families who warrant the access to special education services present unique and complex needs that make administrative decisions anything but universal and simplistic, especially in regards to foster care populations. The…

Parental involvement (broadly defined as including both natural parents and other significant adults) has been consistently shown to produce positive results in students' literacy achievement, and there is widespread agreement among parents and school personnel about the value of parental involvement in education. However, educators do not…

Parents and school administrators are both stakeholders in the IEP (Individualized Education Plan) process. While the inclusion of parents in the process as full members is mandated by IDEA 2004 there remains a growing problem of conflict within this process. Research has reviewed the process of conflict during the IEP meeting and other…

This study presents the results of a fifteen-month research project conducted with a group of Latina (Mexicana) immigrant mothers who took part in an after-school family literacy program that was grounded in a participatory approach to education. This family literacy program emphasized a "strengths" perspective by acknowledging the rich resources…

This report summarizes efforts to develop and pilot test a protocol for collecting information about parent involvement policies, practices, and programs being implemented at the middle and high school levels. The protocol can be used to expand documentation of strategies selected, adapted, and sustained in future years. The study reviewed the…

The United States federal government, through the No Child Left Behind Act, is holding schools accountable for students' proficiency on academic standards. However, standards-based curriculum and instruction, along with school-based support and remediation programs, are not enough to help 100 percent of students to reach proficiency. It is…

Student "affiliation," also referred to as "engagement," "involvement," "identification," "connectedness," participation," and "bonding" with the school is linked to student success,and a lack of affiliation is directly connected to students' reasons for dropping out of school. Educational reformers and school leaders are beginning to turn their…

The concept of brand has crept into many areas of the American economic landscape, and college has been no exception. The ascension of "U.S. News & World Report" rankings, the widespread visibility of collegiate athletic brands, the power of traditional college brands such as the Ivy League or flagship state universities...these are just some of…

Despite the fact that adolescents benefit from caring adults that participate in their child's education, involvement of families decreases incrementally as students progress to higher grades. Through conversations and observations with students, I have examined how students' perceive these points within a poetry program that was developed for…

This article provides a practitioner-friendly synthesis of existing literature on family involvement in the management of dysphagia for school-age. Research reviewed includes family perspectives on programs, therapists, and characteristics that comprise effective family involvement in school-based dysphagia management programs. Also included are…

This article reexamines the conjecture of James S. Coleman that intergenerational social closure promotes student achievement in high schools, analyzing the best national data on academic achievement and social networks: the 2002 and 2004 waves of the Education Longitudinal Study. The results show that within the Catholic school sector, schools…

This article presents results of a study of 229 kindergarten teachers who completed a survey designed to gather information about the current state of Michigan kindergartens. In addition to detailed data that reveals teachers' literacy instructional practices, teachers provided written responses to the following open-ended questions: What are the…

This article compares public and community schools in Salvador, the state capital of Bahia, Brazil. Based on quantitative data analysis and qualitative research conducted on-site during three research trips in 2001, 2003 and 2005, the author finds that Brazil's extreme inequality and the associated concentration of state power in a few hands stand…

Family and community engagement are increasingly seen as powerful tools for making schools more equitable, culturally responsive, and collaborative. The commitment of school leaders is vital to school-community connections, yet is poorly documented in the literature and insufficiently addressed in training for administrators. Many school leaders…

At-risk schools are defined by the Department of Education in the state of Selangor, Malaysia as schools with serious disciplinary problems and low academic achievement. In 2003, the Selangor Department of Education identified 22 schools in this category (Selangor State Department of Education, 2003). Some have shown remarkable improvements and…