Arizona's First Things First partners with other agencies to create a high-quality, family-centered, comprehensive, and collaborative early childhood system that supports the development, health, and early education of all Arizona's children through age 5, helping ensure they enter kindergarten healthy and ready to succeed. One of First Things…

About five years ago, states across the country took on the huge, complex task of developing and implementing new systems to evaluate teacher and principal performance in public schools. In response to a federal mandate aimed at improving student achievement, especially in the lowest performing schools, state boards of education drafted high-level…

The "Assistive Technology Act of 1998," as amended by Public Law 108-364 ("AT Act of 1998," as amended; "AT Act"; Act) requires that the secretary of education submit to Congress a report on the activities funded under that Act. Specifically, the secretary of education is required to annually provide to Congress: (1)…

Response to intervention (RTI) can be both a system for providing early interventions to struggling students and a special education diagnostic tool for evaluating and identifying students with specific learning disabilities. Contributing to the very limited literature on state-level approaches, this report describes how nine states define and…

Throughout the end of the 1990s and the early years of the current decade, states experienced severe downturns in their economies. As has happened during other recessions, higher education, often viewed as discretionary spending compared to other budget demands, was hit particularly hard. During these years of severe fiscal constraints, however, a…

Several key federal and state initiatives are currently moving in the direction of requiring more and better comprehensive service delivery in education. In an effort to avoid duplicating services, better utilize federal dollars, and improve educational opportunities and outcomes, federal legislation promotes aligning and integrating programs and…

In November 2001, with funding support from Lumina Foundation for Education, the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE), in partnership with the American Council on Education (ACE), the State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO), and the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), initiated the "Changing…

This report documents the activities of 18 state-funded partnerships in Arizona's school-to-work (STW) system: 10 regional partnerships, most in their fourth year of implementation, and 8 Maricopa County partnerships, all in their first year of implementation. The report is divided into two sections. The first section highlights the status of each…

Beginning July 1, 1975 the San Jose, California based Center for Employment Training (CET) was granted funds to assist communities with sizeable American Indian populations to develop training and placement programs modelled after itself. These funds enabled three community interest groups in Tucson (Arizona), Guadalupe (Arizona), and Bellingham…

This document profiles the following 13 regional partnerships that together constitute Arizona's school-to-work (STW) system: Cochise STW Partnership; Coconino County STW Partnership; Eastern Arizona STW Partnership; East Valley STW Initiative; Mohave Workforce Development Partnership; Northeast Valley School to Work Consortium; Northland School…