A key strategy of the Kentucky Department of Education's and Council on Postsecondary Education's College and Career Readiness Delivery plan is to provide opportunities for high school students to earn college credit. Districts across Kentucky are implementing dual credit programs, but there is little sharing of information about the…

The Summer 2013 issue of "Voices in Urban Education" presents an interview with Dania Vazquez, founding principal of the Margarita Muñiz Academy, a Boston public high school offering dual-language education in Spanish and English. The first dual-language high school in Massachusetts, this Innovation School opened in the fall of 2012 with…

Purpose: The expansion of alternative education, globally, has coincided with a shift towards greater accountability for ensuring educational access and opportunity, high academic standards and increased graduation rates. While studies suggest the pervasive influence of accountability may be redefining how school leaders provide meaningful…

"I think what I learned in the IB [International Baccalaureate] program...well, in a way I felt like--have you read Great Expectations? When Pip gets the stipend from the mysterious person and he's walking out and the clouds are lifting up and he can see all the possibilities--that's how I felt with the IB program." -Student reflection…

The purpose of the evaluation was to evaluate two alternative programs in a North Carolina (NC) and South Carolina (SC) public school district to determine if they are effective in delivering constructive interventions that modify student behavior once students have left the programs and have returned to their regular learning environments. This…

This study investigates the relationship between acculturation and language learning during a year-long study abroad program at the pre-collegiate level. The researcher presents the experiences of four U.S. American sojourners to Sweden as case studies. This mixed-methods study looks specifically at students with no prior knowledge of the target…

The purpose of this study was to conduct a formative evaluation of the efficacy of the Team Advisory program, an in-school intervention in an urban public high school using fitness to teach study skills and social responsibility, based on the perspective of its faculty (n = 9). The first research question asks what do Boston English Advisors…

This study uses a mixed methods approach to examine a new type of curriculum configuration that supports students' transitions to college: career technical programs of study (POS). Interview and survey data were collected from a college and its feeder high schools in each of three well-established ("mature") sites in geographically…

What does it mean for a mentoring program to succeed? Most evaluations focus on participants' perceptions of success. Few studies employ an independent measure of the intended outcomes of the program, and fewer still examine both participant satisfaction and achievement. This article presents an example of how comparing data on perceived and…

Offering a primer on action research methodologies and examples of practice, "Students in Transition: Research and Practice in Career Development" responds to a dual challenge facing career development educators--designing cutting-edge career development interventions and demonstrating their effectiveness. Overviews of quantitative and qualitative…

This study examined the characteristics of 10 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) focused high schools. A comparative case designed was used to identify key components of STEM school designs. Schools were selected from various regions across the United States. Data collected included websites, national statistics database,…

The research reported in this paper examined a set of innovative high school programs on community college campuses. Specifically, a full-time dual enrollment program and 4 middle college high schools were studied. The authors used in-depth interviews and observational data to investigate the structure, processes, and perceptions of effectiveness…

The "Formative Evaluation of the Canada Student Loans Program" was undertaken to assess issues of program relevance, design and delivery and for the purposes of examining the early impacts of changes made to the program since 1998. The evaluation also reviewed the Performance Measurement Strategy contained in the July 2002 Results-Based…