The National Literacy Act of 1991 (NLA) established the National Institute for Literacy to ensure that literacy would have a place on the federal policy agenda and to invigorate a national effort to improve adult literacy. This report briefly summarizes the primary activities and accomplishments of the National Institute for Literacy over a…

This report represents the second North Carolina Family Impact Seminar in a series designed to connect research and state policymaking. Family Impact Seminars analyze the impact an issue, policy, or program may have on families. This Family Impact Seminar briefing report discusses strategies for providing high quality and cost-effective children's…

Children with serious emotional disturbance have the civil right to receive services in the most integrated setting appropriate to their needs. They further have the human right to be raised in their families and communities, with their individual needs guiding the service array provided. These civil and human rights are embodied in the Americans…

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…

This document describes strategies that are used to create healthier campus environments in which alcohol is less available, more responsibly promoted and served, and poses less of a threat to the health, safety, and well-being of all students. The strategies described in this document accomplish these objectives by changing conditions on campus…

This paper reports on a seminar that provided education policymakers a blueprint for improving social policy. Seminar participants included congressional staff, officials from federal agencies, foundation program officers, representatives of associations and advocacy groups, and state and local policymakers. The sessions opened with an outline of…

This issue brief examines how policies and programs for children and families are changing. It focuses on specific trends in human services, health care, economic development, youth development, and education and describes the implications of these changes for educators and school-community partnerships, paying special attention to the role that…

This book responds to public interest in immigration issues by providing a comprehensive empirical analysis of contemporary Asian Pacific American immigration experience. It focuses on four highly significant, but largely misunderstood, aspects of the contemporary Asian Pacific experience: patterns of demographic growth and diversification; high…

The Michigan English Language Arts Framework (MELAF) offers an illustrative case of top-down and bottom-up confluences in curriculum policymaking. In several distinct ways, state policy met local initiatives to create dynamic partnerships to spread change. State systematic reformers looked to the grass roots for ideas and percolating initiatives.…

To help educators deal with "bullying" problems, intervention strategies are presented in this handbook. It focuses on the insidious day-to-day teasing and harassment typical of bullying and serves as a resource for addressing "bully/victim" problems during the pre-adolescent and adolescent years. Research has shown that the middle-school years…

Any interstate comparison that does not take differences in the cost of education into account will give an incorrect impression of the relative levels at which different states support their schools. The lack of cost-adjusted statistics on state expenditures for elementary and secondary education interferes with policy analysis, resource…

For the past three decades, policies regarding a variety of information issues have emanated from federal agencies, legislative chambers, and corporate boardrooms. Records policies are critically important for records professionals to develop and use as a means of strategically managing the information and evidence found in the millions of records…

This paper was originally developed for the workshop, the Secondary Science Education for Development, and examines the factors shaping educational policy in developing nations. Four sections include: (1) a discussion of two different approaches to the formation of science education policy; (2) an elaboration of the dimensions of the policy…

This publication reviews a public-engagement program entitled "Calling the Roll: Study Circles for Better Schools." The program, which was implemented with help from the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory, called for policymakers to interact with the public in study circles in Arkansas and Oklahoma. The report relates what the…

The end of a decade and the start of a new century provide an opportunity to review how higher education has changed and to assess the implications of these developments for the future. This report focuses on six higher education developments from the recent past: (1) the link between postsecondary education and individual well-being grows…