Developing and sustaining comprehensive school mental health systems should be a shared endeavor between schools and community partners; the task should not rest solely on the shoulders of the K-12 education sector. Community partners, including health and behavioral health providers, can augment the continuum of services available to students and…

When researchers are focused on improving teaching-and-learning domains that match the school district's strategic plan, not only focusing on their own research agenda, they yield powerful results that can be useful for guiding processes of improving student learning.

As an institution built on the foundation of a Normal School, collaboration among faculty members and across program areas and academic units has been part of Western Kentucky University's (WKU) heritage since 1906. In addition to the various collaborative initiatives across campus, there are a variety of initiatives that involve various agencies…

The Core to College initiative aims to facilitate greater coordination between K-12 and postsecondary education systems around implementation of the Common Core State Standards and aligned assessments. Core to College grants have been awarded to teams in Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Oregon,…

The "Renaissance Partnership", a consortium of eleven universities and their partner schools, was one of the first twenty-five Teacher Quality Enhancement Projects funded in 1999. The Project's two primary goals, "to become accountable for the impact of teacher graduates on the students they teach" and "to institutionalize…

For the first time in the nation's history 46 States and the District of Columbia have agreed that all K-12 students will be educated along a common continuum of high academic expectations known as the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Having clear, consistent standards in English language arts/literacy and mathematics will help ensure that all…

The papers presented in this paper accompany a core report about the Appalachian Math Science Partnership (AMSP) entitled "The Appalachian Math Science Partnership: A Multi-State Umbrella Partnership Promoting Local Mathematics and Science Reform Report." Each of them focuses on an especially effective strategy or component of the AMSP…

The Appalachian Math Science Partnership (AMSP) is a project within NSF's (National Science Foundation's) Math Science Partnerships (MSP) initiative. Funded at $23 million over five years, the AMSP involved 51 school districts and nine higher education institutions in Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. The AMSP faced two significant challenges in…

Describes Kentucky's Alternative Training Program for the Preparation of Candidates for Initial Certification, presenting the story of one individual who made a career change to teaching after 15 years as a broadcast journalist. The paper discusses state guidelines, the mentor teacher, the school district alternative training program, the…

For five years, a collaborative team consisting of a special education teacher, a general education teacher, and a university professor conducted research studies in a rural secondary school. Although the general education teacher initially was reluctant to participate in a research project, especially one that involved students with disabilities,…

"Forum Focus" was a semi-annual magazine of the Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) that featured articles on the role of business and higher education on significant issues affecting the P-16 education system. The magazine typically focused on themes featured at the most recently held semi-annual Forum meeting at the time of…

Employment patterns for educational administrators in southeastern Kentucky are shaped by the impending retirements of a large proportion of educational personnel; the changing nature of the principalship; shallow candidate pools for elementary and secondary principalships; and increased collaboration between elementary-secondary schools and…

This paper discusses dropout prevention and "Forward in the Fifth," an innovative program for school development in the Fifth Congressional District of southern Kentucky. The program focused on formation of a support group that could give school systems sustained financial and educational support from community and business leaders.…

In 1986, the Appalachia Educational Laboratory (AEL) established a minigrant program to foster collaboration between K-12 schools and colleges of education. Between 1986 and 1991, AEL minigrants offered seed money for 63 college-school partnership projects in Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia. Prior to 1991, college-school…

This paper examines teachers' attitudes toward issues central to the establishment and functioning of professional development schools in Jefferson County, Kentucky. These issues are teacher effectiveness and teacher empowerment. Like the professional development school concept itself, the research reported is collaborative. Both quantitative and…