"Teacher-Powered Practices: How teacher teams collaboratively lead and create student-centered schools" focuses on how innovative teachers are radically changing the ways schools are designed and run. The how here are the common practices, structures, and processes teacher-powered teams design and use daily. The guide identifies nine…

An innovative system-building initiative known as the STEM Learning Ecosystems Community of Practice (SLECoP) is transforming U.S. STEM education through cross-sector partnerships between schools, afterschool and summer programs, libraries, museums, and businesses, among others. Although logic models exist to describe how SLEs can make positive…

First-time community college presidents are typically chosen from the senior ranks of two-year colleges' administrations, so they know what the job entails to some extent--at least from a close secondhand perspective. Leaders of community colleges who have taken the reins in the mid-2010s say that a close secondhand view only goes so far in…

Community colleges act as the gateway for students to higher education. Many of these colleges realize this mission through open-door policies where students lacking in basic reading, writing, and mathematics skills can enroll. But, this open-access policy often creates challenges when meeting academic standards. Based on data collected from…

Research suggests that institutional commitment to community engagement can be understood by examining levels of student, faculty, and community involvement in engagement; organizational structure, rewards, and campus publications supporting engagement; and compatibility of an institution's mission with this work (Holland, 1997). Underlying all of…

Many reports on rural education give little attention to digital learning. At most, they tend to note either infrastructure needs or the potential of remote course access, with little focus on instruction, outcomes, or exemplars. This report intends to begin correcting that imbalance by connecting the dots between rural regions, rural education,…

This paper is part of a series investigating the implementation of competency education. The purpose of the paper is to explore how districts and schools can redesign grading systems to best help students to excel in academics and to gain the skills that are needed to be successful in college, the community, and the workplace. In order to make the…

As part of the Community and Environment in Rural America (CERA) initiative, the Carsey Institute has been investigating broad trends between rural community types, including the education level of residents and their parents. Since 2007, Carsey researchers have conducted over 17,000 telephone surveys with randomly selected adult Americans from…

The Delaware Enhanced Assessment Grant (DE EAG) project was funded by the U.S. Department of Education in 2006 as an initiative to assist 10 state departments of education (SDE) teams, and local school district and high school teams, in implementing a comprehensive and balanced learning and assessment system (CBAS) with a strong emphasis on a…

The Breaking Through (BT) initiative promotes an expanded and enhanced role for community colleges in providing access to college for low-skilled adults. BT is uniquely important in its systematic integration of adult education, developmental/remedial education, professional-technical education (PTE), and career planning and preparation in…

Five trends are emerging that will not only change the role of human capital in the United States but will also challenge the legacy system of workforce development, skills and competency-focused institutions, and assuredly, community colleges. Workforce investment boards, for example, are currently geographically constrained in environments that…

As the twenty-first century begins, America faces a daunting challenge: The "baby boom echo" is ready for school. The children of World War Two's baby boomers, millions of youngsters are crowding into schools across the nation. Thousands of new schools will be needed to accommodate them. This demand for educational facilities is…

"Chronicle of Higher Education" presents an abundant source of news and information for college and university faculty members and administrators. This April 30, 2004 issue of "Chronicle for Higher Education" includes the following articles: (1) "Why Michigan State Opted Out" (Eddington-Shipman, Richard); (2)…