Offers suggestions to community service coordinators on how to encourage the use of service learning projects among business faculty in the form of consulting for non-profit organizations. Provides examples of projects in marketing and management courses and discusses how to implement this type of activity in a business course. (EV)

Explores criteria for successful adoption of a Web-based collaborative technology in a graduate class. Results of focus groups and surveys demonstrated that classic diffusion of innovation dimensions could be applied to education if implemented correctly, and explains why the implementation of new technology was unsuccessful in this class.…

Examines educational decentralization efforts in developed and developing countries. Explores which conditions produce best results and roles and relationships of the school/community and region/center. Summarizes typical reasons for school-based management's failure, highlighting schools' need to build capacity, maintain decentralization, and…

Past payment by results schemes have failed miserably. Britain's modified 150-year-old system was disdained by teachers, school managers, and inspectors; schools became learning-impoverished environments with test-driven curricula. In modern-day America, accountability concerns and mistrust are corrupting or crippling genuine improvement efforts.…

A 4-year study of 27 system-of-care sites designed to provides mental health services to children and adolescents, found that despite many changes in each local service system, no site was able to fully implement all 16 key attributes comprising an ideal system-of-care model (including sites with previous system-building experience). (Contains…

Discusses implementation of the Literacy Hour in small rural schools in England. Notes that the study supports evidence from national United Kingdom data that progress in literacy was made during the first year in which the Literacy Hour was operative. Shows that reading scores provide only a partial picture and that progress in writing may be…

By 1993, New York City's multicultural and innovative Children of the Rainbow curriculum had been discontinued and the education chancellor fired. This article examines the curriculum's development and implementation and the controversies surrounding it. After-effects linger, as other U.S. districts address various social issues in the school…

Propositions about what works in program evaluation are presented: (1) evaluators should be involved from the beginning; (2) evaluation should be based on explicit programmatic theory; (3) quasi-experimental designs must have high internal validity; and (4) evaluators must combat the deterioration of experimental control that occurs in…

Describes design and implementation of the outreach and dissemination approach used by the National Center on Education in the Inner Cities, with emphases on building on existing structures for information dissemination, training, and technical support for research utilization. Application of the Model of Outreach and Utilization was guided by two…

The national education goals developed during the historic 1989 Education Summit became the springboard for several federal initiatives, including the National Science Education Standards. The Standards define levels of understanding and abilities that all students should develop and recognize that many groups, including principals, share…

Describes treatment activities at the Boys Town Emergency Shelter Program for runaway and homeless youths. An examination of data collected from 100 shelter users indicated a high number of teaching interactions between staff and youths high levels of youth satisfaction with the staff; and a low frequency of youth disruptive behaviors in the…

Discusses 13 books for teachers that describe the what, how, and why of literature-based instruction in a variety of classrooms across the country. (SR)

Guilford County (North Carolina) Schools, a newly consolidated district, trained principals to become better evaluators of teachers' performance and develop individually tailored instructional improvement strategies. Project H.E.L.P. (Helping Evaluators Lift Performance) improved many teachers' effectiveness and trimmed 134 substandard performers…

Documents local variability in response to state-mandated reform in Maryland and illustrates the challenges of implementing centralized policy as an educational improvement tool. Discusses a longitudinal project exploring student and staff experience at five diverse high schools. Advises improvement-minded state-level policymakers to be more…

Describes and analyzes a training program for school support agents carried out in Madrid, Spain, from 1990 to 1992. Explores the institutional, cultural, and personal factors influencing program implementation. Addresses problems involved in reconstructing the theory and practice of external support through inservice training of school support…