Often a central feature of a school's improvement efforts is the adoption of a Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) model, an externally developed research-based design for school improvement. Adopting a model is only the first step in CSR. Another important step is forging partnerships with developers of CSR models. This guide aims to help schools…

Comprehensive school reform involves changes in every aspect of school operations, from classroom instruction to school governance. Some schools develop their own reform approach from within. Others seek assistance from without, particularly from organizations that have developed coherent, research-based approaches, or school-reform models. For…

This guide is intended to help collaborative groups work together more effectively to promote children's readiness for school and provides useful information on the many factors that affect school readiness. The guide notes North Carolina's definition of school readiness as the condition of children as they enter school, based on five…

This issue of the NCEDL Spotlight Series newsletter adds California and Ohio to a re-analysis of findings from an earlier report looking at the move to establish a state pre-kindergarten program for 4-year-olds in Georgia, Illinois, New York, South Carolina, and Texas. Key figures in political and educational circles in these seven states were…

The evolutionary work world of today is placing continuous change on career professionals and clients. Discussing different perspectives on the transition process is helpful for clients. This paper presents a case study that contains an experiential exercise and discussion about managing workplace change. The case study and questions provide an…

This is a qualitative case study that was conducted on Palomar College in North San Diego (California). Palomar made an institutional commitment in its vision statement to transform the college into a "learning college" that emphasized student learning. The purpose of this study was to identify strategies and processes in transforming…

This document is comprised of a progress report and five policy briefs related to the New Mexico Advocates for Children and Families' Campaign To Reduce Child Poverty. This multi-year initiative educates the public and policymakers about child poverty and promotes public policy changes that would reduce poverty. The progress report presents…

This digest in Spanish explains why public-school governance is receiving increasing scrutiny. It identifies who is held accountable for results in the current governance system and describes recent proposals for transforming governance structures. Since many reforms of the past decade bypassed the school board and district office, reformers are…

Comprehensive school reform (CSR) focuses on reorganizing and revitalizing entire schools, rather than on implementing individual programs. The idea behind CSR is that schools cannot educate all students to high levels unless all the education system's components work together toward a common goal. Choosing a CSR model can be difficult and…

Based on the work of the National Council on Research in Child Welfare (NCRCW), this handbook is designed to help social service agency executives cope with changing times for child welfare agencies, strengthen traditional services to meet today's needs, and analyze and plan for the future. The manual aims to demystify quality improvement theory…

This document integrates reports, perspectives, and concerns from four major discussion groups that participated in a June 1994 workshop on restructuring engineering education. Discussion groups focused on four topics--students, faculty, curricula, and experiential learning. Four major recommendations emerged from the meeting: (1) engineering…

This book examines the Eight-Year Study, or "Adventure in American Education," which was a landmark experiment in curriculum reform in 30 American high schools from 1933 to 1939. The study not only investigated the college success of the graduates of the 30 schools that were engaged in revising their curricula, but also attempted to…

This document contains four articles that provide research-based strategies to promote diversity in the higher education community. Diversity programming at many community colleges tends to be event-centered, whether those events are annual, such as Native American Awareness Month, or incidental, like responses to high-profile hate crimes.…

This paper provides data on the Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration (CSRD) program in the mid-continent region. Started in 1998 and part of the Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning and Model Developers Plan, the CSRD program aims to increase student achievement by assisting schools across the country to implement successful,…

This paper presents a history of California's offices of the Superintendent of Public Instruction, State Board of Education, and Secretary of Education by tracing the creation and development of these respective authorities. It discusses the origins of these offices, from the drafting of California's first constitution through the present day, and…