District officials often assume that decentralization will produce immediate improvement, uncover abundant building-level expertise, and spawn productive, harmonious decision making. Staff development must be geared to eliminating false expectations, developing a thorough knowledge base, and understanding how to control and evaluate the program.…

Although portfolio assessment offers exciting alternative to traditional testing methods, ensuring accurate representation and measurement of student performance is challenging task. As Vermont's experience shows, reliability of teacher evaluation is very low, and setting acceptable standards is difficult. Before adopting portfolio approach,…

Reviews small-scale, exploratory research into British schools' management of concurrent educational reform innovations generated by government, local education authorities, and the schools themselves. Describes changing innovations patterns, key factors influencing their adoption and implementation, the central management strategies employed, and…

Health education practitioners often neglect theories, possibly because of lack of training in their use or misunderstanding of their contribution to practice. Ways to make them more useful include (1) identifying helpful data; (2) fitting theories to projects and anticipating problems; (3) selecting appropriate theories; and (4) using parts of…

Discusses course workload in college-affiliated independent study programs. A program at Brigham Young University that addressed the problem of workload equivalence and reduced the number of submitted lessons is described, including benefits to students and faculty and an implementation strategy. (10 references) (LRW)

Describes the Gold Seal/Tech Prep program in Danville, Illinois, which includes a technology education concentration. The curriculum demonstrates why, because so many technology education courses were required for other core concentrations, it had to be an integral part of the new program. (JOW)

As societal demands for health and fitness are changing, physical education curricula must also change. The traditional multiactivity curriculum is inadequate, because poorly skilled students lack enough time to learn the necessary skills. Three alternative curriculum models (adventure education, physical fitness, and sports education)…

Although sympathetic to the philosophic goal of developing an adequacy conception, this article questions that goal's feasibility for any but the earliest primary grade levels. Suggested reform strategies are a grab bag of untested ideas. As evidence from the Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) project shows, little progress has been made in…

Documents the process and the results of restructuring the College of Education at the University of New Mexico. The goal is to inform other colleges and universities of these experiences, so that they can anticipate the issues that will arise during the restructuring process. Describes the implementation plan and discusses major questions posed…

Describes formal mentoring program for junior female faculty implemented by Southern Illinois University at Carbondale because women face more career barriers than men and because mentoring shows promise as a contributor to career success. Describes Faculty Mentoring Program and includes section on program evaluation. (NB)

Outlines the file structure requirements for a microcomputer-based information retrieval system using FoxPro, a relational database management system (DBMS). Issues relating to the design and implementation of such systems are discussed, and two possible designs are examined in terms of space economy and practicality of implementation. (15…

Since 1990, when a Fort Meyers (Florida) school became the nation's first core-knowledge site, over 50 other schools have taken pioneering steps to teach this curriculum. Core-knowledge guidelines include school-community understanding, acceptance, and involvement; alignment of curriculum with local and state guidelines; and collaboration and…

Offers five strategies to help high school drama teachers establish a planning strategy for implementing and managing a theater program, helping them to shift from the defensive role and redirect their focus to administrative and management issues. (SR)

Discusses the culture of technology, how it differs from the past, why change is needed, what are the problems associated with the change, and how technology education programs should be implemented. (JOW)

A systematic process for planning, implementing, and maintaining peer-tutoring interventions is presented. Academic and social benefits of peer tutoring are briefly documented. The process includes four components: planning, training, monitoring/evaluation, and problem solving. (DB)