Americans generally lack foreign language competence, and their exposure to foreign languages in the United States is inadequate. Foreign language instruction is deficient in both quality and quantity, and although there are indications of improvement in both areas, it will be many years before the effects of improvements are clear. The…

A project was designed to provide career development activities for selected educationally at-risk seventh graders in two target junior high schools in the Roanoke City Public School System, Virginia. The assumption was that career development activities that provide students with increased self-understanding, coupled with strategies involving the…

The economic and political forces behind recent calls for excellence in education are pointing to necessarily dramatic changes in the nature of the teaching profession. Members of the business community, state political leaders, and teachers are working together--with substantial private and state monies--to implement a radical reform agenda that…

Thirteen Wyoming teachers and counselors interviewed managers in 215 businesses covering 9,515 jobs. This field study served as a basis for developing a field study-data collection model to be used in establishing an education-business liaison network. Each interviewer participating in the study was instructed to contact from 10 to 20 local…

Intended for teachers, students, and researchers of reading, this book reflects the theories, models, and research generated over the past 10 years on the psychology and pedagogy of reading. Essays in the first section of the book deal with the historical changes in reading research and theory, and the pioneers of reading research. Essays in the…

Students drop out of school for a wide variety of reasons. Programs to discourage dropping out must therefore accommodate the actual needs of individual students rather than aim at the assumed needs of the "typical dropout." This document reviews school policies and programs that could affect dropout tendencies positively. Among these…

Information about how handicapped students can pay for postsecondary education and training is provided in this fact sheet for students, parents, and professionals who assist disabled students. The financial aid system is described, with attention to the application and disbursement process and federal financial aid programs. The family…

Procedures for revising a K-12 social studies program so that it includes thinking skill activities and for implementing the revised curriculum are discussed. Procedures are: the formation of a curriculum committee and sub-committees; current program assessment to determine needs regarding thinking skills; deciding on a rationale; selecting…

Recent economic and technological changes, as well as changes in the very nature of work, have forced business institutions to redirect themselves. Consequently, human resource development (HRD) activities are no longer a group of diverse practices at the periphery of a few organizations. Rather, the scope of HRD has expanded to include solving…

This report forecasts changes in the education system of the province of Ontario to assist educators responsible for managing changes in the next decade. The report is arranged in three sections, each accompanied by tables and figures. Section 1, "Quantitative Perspectives on the Future of Ontario School Boards through 1996," by Tom…

In 1972-73 Grant Elementary School began the first year-round school in Utah. The program involves changes for teachers and students, and increases both in the number of school days and teachers' salaries. Each teacher has one-fourth more students than the average classroom in the community; each teacher has one-fourth more days (45) in which to…

This module, which is one in a series of 127 performance-based teacher education learning packages focusing upon specific professional competencies of vocational teachers, deals with developing a plan for evaluating a vocational program, performing a program evaluation, and developing a final evaluation report. Addressed in the individual learning…

This document contains summaries of 12 presentations given at a conference held in reponse to the comprehensive Oregon school improvement plan entitled "Oregon Action Plan for Excellence." The plan provides a framework for improving public schools in the areas of graduation requirements, academic expectations and assessment, teacher and…

Changing population patterns, inflated housing costs, and cuts in school financing have forced many school districts to face school closures and school consolidation as a way of maintaining solvency. This report reviews the literature on school consolidation with attention to the fact that the need to consolidate now faces elementary schools as…

This essay proposes a responsive research agenda to examine relationships between supervisory inquiry and practice on one hand, and teaching and learning on the other. The agenda first calls for policy-oriented research that examines the implications of state-mandated educational changes on supervisory practices and commensurate teaching and…