Discusses the changing role of institutional research in light of: (1) demands for increased productivity; (2) the need to recruit and retain nontraditional students; (3) the high costs of vocational education; (4) the complex data collection requirements of program evaluation; and (5) the growing importance of collective bargaining. (JP)

Having established that mastery learning works, researchers are beginning to investigate components of the system and theorists are integrating it with other recent trends. (Author)

Demonstrates the importance and effectiveness of a college-community partnership to the success of Enterprise State Junior College's programs for rural women. Underscores the importance of comprehensive needs assessment, counseling sensitive to women's needs, flexible programing, special support services, and continuous evaluation. (AYC)

Evaluates a bilingual/bicultural education pilot program in which native speakers of Vietnamese, Korean, Spanish, and English participated. Language classes were integrated within the overall curriculum. School attendance, motivation, language proficiency, and academic grades all improved. (PMJ)

Describes a school-community program based on and extending the efforts of the Michigan Model Family Geography Challenge. The program includes inviting community members to participate in hands-on activities, as well as, shared activities between parents and students followed by dinner and socializing. Discusses materials, assessment, and…

Investigated the effects of a year-long project designed to bring learning to the forefront in two urban accelerated schools through "Powerful Learning Partners" (collegial partners for teachers), "Powerful Learning Seminars" (teaching a constructivist approach), and a teacher-constructed checklist for teacher self-evaluation.…

Examines the history, philosophy, methods, and operations of the Mary McLeod Bethune Institute, an Afrocentric supplementary Saturday elementary school in Los Angeles (California). Qualitative data show the role this enrichment plays in developing socially active and capable African American youth through the study of African American culture and…

The Teachers Educating and Motivating Students (TEAMS) model emphasizes the use of collaborative school/university partnerships for elementary teacher preparation. This competency-based, structured block program features concurrent enrollment in groups of courses and a corresponding field component. Perception surveys and workplace competency…

Overviews factors influencing personnel evaluations and school improvement efforts in rural schools. Reports on a national study of elementary school teachers that revealed no relationship among personnel evaluations, student outcomes, and school improvement efforts. Suggests that school improvement programs include personnel evaluations that…

Examined effectiveness of a teacher education program emphasizing skills and knowledge needed in multicultural, multilingual urban middle school settings. Found that candidates were already culturally/linguistically sensitive, and became more so during the program; felt prepared to meet student needs; and still had difficulty envisioning the…

The Baltimore School and Family Connections Project is a collaborative effort to design comprehensive partnership programs and evaluate their results. This case study explores one school's efforts to involve middle-grades students and their families in learning activities at home during the summer break. Marginal students who worked on the home…

Uses Milwaukee's school choice/voucher initiative to illustrate how politically motivated evaluation and compromise legislation can dilute potentially beneficial educational innovations. The initiative's success despite counterproductive legislative tampering and biased evaluation is addressed, along with a discussion of the evaluation's…

Responds to Hiebert's 1994 article in Educational Researcher in which she criticized Reading Recovery (RR) advocates for failing to base RR's success on an adequate cost-benefit analysis. The authors suggest reliance on the informal judgements of local administrators rather than using administratively difficult, large-scale, cost-benefit analyses…

This article discusses a 2-year study involving 27 special educators of elementary and middle schools and 47 students with learning disabilities that explored the effects of using curriculum-based measurement and transenvironmental programming, each alone and in combination, for readying students to move from resource rooms to regular classrooms…

This article introduces Project PREPARE, a 5-year project to develop a collaborative site of practice and inquiry between two universities, primary and elementary schools in a poor rural town, and the school district. During the collaboration, there were steady improvement in student achievement in reading and mathematics on multiple measures.…