Enacted as part of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the E-rate provides discounts to public and private schools, libraries, and consortia on telecommunications services, Internet access, and internal networking. Discounts vary based on the poverty level of the community. The first section of this report presents findings from surveys returned…

Discusses the efforts of the Career and Technical Education programs offered by the Illinois Community College System to provide people with the skills and training needed to compete successfully in the workforce of the future. Describes the acquisition of such skills and training to be increasingly crucial. Emphasizes that with increasing numbers…

This report describes the methodology and initial results of an evaluation of the universal (school-wide) Positive Behavioral Intervention and Support (PBIS) initiative in Illinois, including (1) strategies for establishing research-based practices and data-based evaluation systems in implementation schools; (2) methodology and initial findings of…

This annual report addresses the key achievements of and financial and service performance evaluations for Whitireia Community Polytechnic (New Zealand) for the year 2000. One key achievement highlighted in the report included the target student completion rate being 76%, while the actual completion rate was 83%. Every program was surveyed for…

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) compiled this guide for schools, community groups, and individuals who are choosing programs that teach personal safety to children. A task force of eight other organizations contributed to the guide. The guide defines child victimization as sexual abuse and assault, abduction,…

This report describes several aspects of families' experiences in beginning early intervention services using data from the National Early Intervention Longitudinal Study (NEILS). Funded by the U.S. Department of Education, NEILS is following a nationally representative sample of 3,338 infants and toddlers and their families from the time they…

This document presents practical guidelines for evaluating community-based adult leaning projects in the United Kingdom to document their impacts. The guide provides frameworks, terms of reference, examples of methods used by community-based projects, ways of demonstrating project impact, and a range of evaluation tools. Sections 1 through 10…

Project REAL (Rural Education Aligned for Learning) aims to improve mathematics and science education in grades 5-8 in five rural Ohio school districts identified as in "academic emergency" or on "academic watch." Program goals are to reform curricula to teach skills and concepts, rather than facts; improve students' math and…

This paper focuses on school reform in England and in particular on the attempts to increase diversity and choice through specialist schools. It examines the extent to which diversity and choice have been introduced into the state (public) education system and then presents key findings to emerge from an evaluation of the flagship government…

With the existence of 67 monographs and approximately 60 practitioners trained in action research in the western and central parts of Pennsylvania from project years 1995-98, the 1998-99 Section 353 project expanded the action research network (ARN) to include teachers, administrators, and researchers in the northeastern and southeastern parts of…

This packet contains three papers from a symposium on evaluating university human resource development (HRD) programs. The first paper, "Where Have All the Young Ones Gone? An Analysis of the Graduates of an Human Resource Development Program" (Douglas H. Smith, Jo D. Gallagher), reports the results of a survey of graduates between 1998…

This set of manuals was developed by the California Child Care Initiative for the training of Spanish-speaking family day care providers. The English-language trainer's guide has been designed to accompany "El Comienzo" ("The Beginner") and "Esto Es Familiar" ("It's a Family Affair"). The Spanish-language…

Although an extensive body of literature exists on the impact of Head Start, very few studies have used an experimental design with random assignment, a key methodological component needed to increase the weight of evaluation findings. This study used a randomized design with a wide range of outcomes related to school readiness to assess the…

The Graduate School of Education (GSE) at the University of California at Berkeley (UCB), the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) have collaborated to pilot an on-site training and mentoring program for intern science teachers. Exit interviews suggest that its innovative mentoring…

A review of Florida's work force development (WD) system focuses on state-level entities and programs involved in providing job training services, workforce education services, and other services to help persons obtain and retain jobs. State-level WD entities consist of 10 state agencies and public-private partnerships, 2 primary state-level…