Children's services in England are undergoing a radical reorganisation. New arrangements for local authorities and statutory partners impact significantly on organisations in the voluntary and community sector that are encouraged to deliver more public services. Local voluntary organisations will need help to organise themselves and to build…

In order to effectively address the complex issue of school safety, school and community partnerships are being formed with greater frequency and intensity. Collaboration between educational, law enforcement, and mental health personnel is now widely considered to be the most effective means for addressing issues of school safety (Dryfoos, 1998;…

Addiction treatment agencies face challenges in adopting and sustaining Motivational Interviewing (MI) use. Addiction Educators can assist agencies in changing practices by preparing new practitioners to have some beginning skills in adoption and sustaining strategies. Investigators assessed three types of agency training and six administrative…

The Oregon Practice Improvement Collaborative (OPIC) facilitated the implementation of motivational interviewing (MI) in two community-based substance abuse treatment agencies. "The Change Book: A Blueprint for Technology Transfer" was used to structure and support the implementation of motivational interviewing. As part of the…

Recently, one of these authors was asked to facilitate a meeting of about a dozen Native Americans, all present and past employees of a large Federal agency, and members of a Native American affinity group. A Native American colleague and others from the group informed the author in preparatory session that the group would employ a "talking…

A group of rural districts benefited when various agencies that were offering professional learning experiences combined their efforts into one, more comprehensive program. Now teachers can earn graduate credits, renew their licenses, or renew their energies, through one center.

Media coverage of the worldwide outbreak of avian flu and the potential for a pandemic has resulted in anxiety and consternation among members of the US public. The US President George W. Bush has released the federal pandemic-preparedness plan that calls on communities to coordinate plans with local and state health departments and other…

For-profit education companies are ramping up their businesses to tap into millions of federal dollars set aside to provide tutoring for students attending struggling schools. Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, Title I schools that fail to reach state achievement goals three years in a row are required to offer free tutoring to students…

Communities of Practice offer state agency personnel a promising approach for engaging stakeholder groups in collaboratively solving complex and often persistent problems in special education. Communities of Practice can help state agency personnel drive strategy, solve problems, promote the spread of best practices, develop members' professional…

GIS Live is a live, interactive, web problem-solving (WPS) program that partners Geographic Information Systems (GIS) professionals with educators to implement geospatial technologies as curriculum-learning tools. It is a collaborative effort of many government agencies, educational institutions, and professional organizations. Problem-based…

This project--funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts--is an effort to address the performance of state higher education systems, and the public sectors within them, relative to their levels of funding. The measure used for funding and those used for performance are described. The data used throughout this study were compiled and analyzed to answer…

Over the last decade the power of states to develop more effective policies and programs to improve the well-being of children has been substantially strengthened by the increasing availability of high quality child well-being indicator data at the state level. Much of these data have been developed by or under the guidance of federal statistical…

The abuse of anabolic steroids by teenagers--that is, their use without a prescription--is a health concern. Anabolic steroids are synthetic forms of the hormone testosterone that can be taken orally, injected, or rubbed on the skin. Although a 2006 survey funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) found that less than 3 percent of 12th…

The NRC Resident Research Associateship Program at NIST provides two-year temporary appointments for outstanding scientists and engineers. This book describes program applicants and awardees and offers suggestions for an in-depth assessment of career outcomes. Preliminary investigation indicates that outreach efforts produce more qualified…

This paper responds to a request asking for a Response to Intervention (RtI) background information and a scan of what states are doing in this area. This paper presents summaries that provide basic information about the status of state RtI initiatives in each of the southeastern states. The information was collected from State Education Agency…