Describes the five winners of the APPA's Effective & Innovative Practices Award. These facilities management programs and processes were recognized for enhancing service delivery, lowering costs, increasing productivity, improving customer service, generating revenue, or otherwise benefiting the educational institution. (EV)

An ex ante benefit-cost analysis was conducted of applied tree improvement programs in the North Central Region from 1986 through the year 2030. Results for 24 tree species indicate that ex ante evaluation of the programs is difficult, but the intuition of professionals has built-in efficiency considerations. (TJH)

Online degree programs are continuing to gain popularity among institutions of higher education as indicated by "U.S. News" who recently listed 263 accredited online graduate degree programs on its Web site (U. S. News and World Report, U.S. News Online, n.d.) As the access afforded by distance education increases the number of students…

Setting the Direction for Special Education in Alberta is a major Alberta Education project designed to create a new framework that will help students with special needs receive the education necessary to be successful. Phase 1 of the project reviewed the effectiveness of the current approach and then focused on defining a vision and principles…

This study examined the design, implementation, and instructional effectiveness of three of America's most widely disseminated comprehensive school reform programs (the Accelerated Schools Project, America's Choice, and Successful for All) over a four year period that encompassed the school years 2000-2001 through 2003-2004. The authors' goal in…

In the modern economy, a college degree has become the gateway to the middle class. Nearly 75 percent of future jobs will require a postsecondary degree or certificate, and many of these job openings will be in middle-skill professions that require more than a high school degree but less than a four-year college degree. Although the demand for…

The overarching goals of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 are to immediately stimulate the economy in the short term and to invest in education and other essential public services that will ensure the long-term economic health of this nation. The United States Education Department (USED) offers guiding principles to be…

The National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST) at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) was contracted to undertake a three-year external evaluation of the Artful Learning program, an arts-based school improvement model developed from the work and philosophy of the late composer Leonard Bernstein.…

This discussion article takes a closer look at 5 Early Reading First projects in this special issue. It first explores what needed to be in place before these projects could help teachers individualize instructional support for children. The way in which each project sought to provide effective instruction for all children is then discussed,…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to introduce and describe the features of a new e-learning quality framework developed for a large multi-campus university. The framework is explicitly designed to improve the quality of e-learning sites and the quality of online student learning, by developing the skills of the academics who design the sites.…

This formative experiment was designed to ensure that a group of high school students developed their literacy habits. The intervention consisted of a schoolwide approach to literacy using four instructional routines: think-alouds, note-taking writing to learn, and dedicated reading time. As part of the formative experiment, we document the…

Creative Partnerships aims to change the ways in which children learn and teachers teach, and to support whole school change. Our research examines how schools take up the "cultural offer" made by Creative Partnerships. In this article, drawing on data from snapshot visits to 40 English schools, we suggest that it has made a difference…

Reading literacy has been a major problem for American students for the past several years. Educators have struggled to find a solution to this problem that will help students while at the same time maintain their interest in the subject matter. Educational video games and other e-learning technologies have made their way into classrooms and homes…

Context: Diabetes care is challenging in rural areas. Research has shown that the utilization of electronic patient registries improves care; however, improvements generally have been described in combination with other ongoing interventions. The level of basic registry utilization sufficient for positive change is unknown. Purpose: The goal of…

This document summarizes comments from 539 individuals on a literacy framework for Alberta, provided during the Alberta Literacy Forum held in Edmonton from April 14 to 16, 2008. The Forum was Alberta's contribution to the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC) Pan-Canadian Interactive Literacy Forum, which involved all of Canada's…