The Virginia Tidewater Consortium's effort to reach out to the community began twenty-seven years ago when it received an Educational Opportunity Center (EOC) grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The EOC was specifically designed to work with adults from low socioeconomic backgrounds, most of them minorities. In southeastern Virginia,…

What do leaders mean when they talk about networks and whether leadership networks have the power to transform the profession? When it comes to educational leadership networks, there certainly are more than seven important questions. This article focuses on seven key questions about networking in the superintendent ranks by the coordinator of one…

Research on the impact of professional development and mentoring in the activities of K-12 classroom teachers and their positive effects has been widely documented (Borko, Davinroy, Bliem, & Cumbo, 2000; Broaddus & Bloodgood, 1999; Lyons, 1991; Richardson, 1999). However, comparatively little is known about the effect of professional development…

This article presents the steps taken over three years (2003-2006) by the Consortium for Assessing Performance Standards, a New Jersey Grant Project to create a database of thematically organized, integrated performance assessment tasks at the benchmark levels of proficiency, novice-mid, intermediate-low and pre-advanced as defined by the ACTFL…

This agenda highlights the Consortium on Chicago School Research' priorities for Chicago school research during the 2004 to 2008 period, including both the continuation of current research and new explorations. This proposed research intends to assist CPS leadership, local schools, and the education reform community with evidence-based results…

This article presents empirical evidence from a follow-up study of schools which had been members of a school-based research consortium. It offers insight into the work of professional learning communities at the level of practice and so contributes to the growing research interest in probing their development. It investigates the extent to which…

New Jersey is one of fifteen states selected by the Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund to receive a planning and implementation grant for setting a reform agenda for a series of state policies that are designed to improve educational leadership and student learning. Under this grant, the State Action for Education Leadership Project (SAELP)…

The articles describes the efforts of seven rural systems in northeast Alabama to respond in a cooperative manner to new initiatives from the State Department of Education to improve their inservice/staff development programs. The University of Alabama, primarily through its Gadsden Center, provided professional support and coordinating…

The challenges to teacher educators in sub-Saharan Africa are acute. This paper describes how the Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) consortium is working within institutional and national policy systems to support school-based teacher professional development. The TESSA consortium (13 African institutions and 5 international…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to discuss several technology applications that are being used to address current problems or opportunities related to multicultural education. Design/methodology/approach: Five technology applications or technology-related projects are discussed, including a teacher education literacy tool, social networking…

Alternative certification programs continue to increase as school districts, institutions of higher education, and commercial companies share common educational expectations. In Kansas, a state-wide collaborative of eleven partner institutions, governed by an advisory board, designed a conceptual framework, a standards-based program, curriculum,…

This monograph uses a variety of data resources and socio-cultural theoretical frames to highlight the benefits, contradictions, and directions for the future of collaboration between K-12 education and university scientists based on research and evaluation of a NSF-funded project from the Graduate Teaching Fellows in K-12 Education program…

Using TESOL's 1997 landmark publication, ESL Standards for Pre-K-12 as a building block, the new 2006 PreK-12 English Language Proficiency Standards expands the scope and breadth of ESL content standards: (1) Connects language to the specific core curriculum content areas of English language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies; (2)…