To accumulate the data necessary for making recommendations for the improvement of middle school reading programs in Massachusetts, such programs were assessed by computer searches, informal interviews, and random questionnaires. "TRANS," Teaching Reading Acquisition Natural to Subject Areas, embodies the kind of program needed to meet…

Rather than focusing on teaching teachers, university researchers helped local teachers study what students thought about math and science ideas--with powerful results. As teachers understood what students were thinking, they modified their practices to promote deeper understanding. Their collaboration created bottom-up change.

Turning Points is a national design for middle school change, coordinated by the Center for Collaborative Education in Boston, Massachusetts, which serves as the National Turning Points Center. The design focuses on restructuring middle schools to improve learning, teaching, and assessment for all students. It is based on the seminal "Turning…

The second year of "Keep the Promise" Research--an in-depth, three-year study of academic remediation programs in Massachusetts' three largest school districts--is producing an array of evidence demonstrating the severely negative impact of the Commonwealth's 80% cut in MCAS remediation funding in the F'04 budget. This report--a…

This paper describes a combined B.A.-M.A.T. program, a project planned jointly by Kenyon College and Tufts University for the recruitment of outstanding liberal arts students who are interested in teaching careers. The program fulfills the requirements for teacher certification at the middle or secondary level in Massachusetts. The program offered…

This booklet describes some recent participant planned staff development activities in Massachusetts. To varying degrees, programs are initiated, governed, and designed by participants. In the first section, profiles are presented of six programs which represent a cross-section of models serving small, medium, and large school systems. Included in…

Instructional materials presented in this teaching guide, one of five developed as part of the vocational strategies project, are intended to provide vocational services to mildly handicapped special needs students mainstreamed into regular schools at the middle school level. The skill development described is based on the belief that preparation…

A study was conducted to evaluate the Boston Public Schools Career Exploration Project. The project model contained assumptions regarding need for a significant amount of funding, a teacher training program, phased implementation with a concentration of effort in pilot schools, substantial amounts of materials, creation of positions of leadership,…

"Straight A's: Public Education Policy and Progress" is a biweekly newsletter that focuses on education news and events both in Washington, DC and around the country. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) Governor Bush Signs Middle Grades Reform Act, Sends 250 Reading Coaches into Florida Middle Schools; (2) The…

This resource guide deals with open education at the secondary level. It concentrates on open education schools and programs in the Boston area, as its intended audience is Massachusetts Educators. The "open" concept in education is discussed, and a scale designed to measure the extent to which a given program embodies the open school…

This paper reports qualitative and quantitative data obtained about relationships between 27 students with special language needs or learning disabilities and their nondisabled peers (N=99) in four integrated eighth grade classes of an urban middle school in Massachusetts. The study involved approximately 120 hours of in-school observation over a…

New software tools for data analysis provide rich opportunities for representing and understanding data. However, little research has been done on how learners use these tools to think about data, nor how that affects teaching. This paper describes several ways that learners use new software tools to deal with variability in analyzing data,…

Education specialists have written volumes on the best ways to help children learn to read and write, but who is helping them navigate the potentially treacherous waters of social interactions? While in school to study, children are also preoccupied with understanding the rules governing social relationships. Issues of trust and loyalty, rivalry…

Less than one third of American eighth graders score in the two highest performance levels on the grade 8 mathematics test given by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Only a little over one third of Massachusetts eighth graders score at the two highest performance levels on the state's own grade 8 mathematics test. In 2002, the…