The goal of this American Association of School Administrators (AASA) youth apprenticeship toolkit is to encourage the creation of school and business partnerships as a viable and expansive pathway to success in school, career and work. This toolkit provides resources for secondary and community college administrators to advocate for and build…

Many school districts have recently revised, or tried to revise, their policies for assigning students to schools, because the legal and political status of racial and other kinds of diversity is uncertain, and the districts are facing fiscal austerity. This article presents case studies of politics and student assignment policy in three large…

The basic components of apprenticeships are the same today as in 1937, when the National Apprenticeship Act set the foundation for apprenticeships in the United States. Apprentices enter into a structured training program of classroom and paid on-the-job training under the guidance of a mentor. As their skills increase, so do their wages. Upon…

Community-driven design is a current movement in the forefront of many designers' practices and on university campuses in design programs. The authors examine work from their respective public state universities' design programs as examples of best practices. In these case studies, the authors share experiences using community-based design…

Increasing criticism of practicing educational leaders has led to additional critiques of the university programs in which they are prepared. In response, many states have mandated statewide university preparation program redesign. The articles in this special issue describe five unique cases of principal preparation program redesign--including…

The Pittsburgh Promise is a scholarship program that provides $5,000 per year toward college tuition for public high school graduates in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who earned a 2.5 GPA and a 90% attendance record. This study used a difference-in-difference design to assess whether the introduction of the Promise scholarship program directly…

Purpose: This article examines factors that affect school board policy making about student diversity within two southern urban-suburban school districts experiencing changing demographics: Jefferson County Public Schools and the Wake County Public School System. Both districts have a history of voluntary integration efforts, and research shows…

This article describes how three universities approach middle level teacher preparation through partnerships and clinical experiences. The authors share the structures of their programs and the role of their partnerships in the clinical preparation of their candidates. They also discuss the challenges and opportunities presented by…

A college credential is essential for individuals seeking to earn family-supporting wages. However, over 90 million Americans face considerable barriers in obtaining the basic academic skills necessary to enroll in college-level courses. Research, combined with the challenges experienced daily by those in the workforce development field, has led…

This study uses the best available national data to project future supply and demand for occupations associated with the energy industry for each Appalachian state, and the number of people enrolled in and graduating from programs in the Region's institutions of higher education that will be available to meet or exceed the demand. The report…

The challenge of producing the systemic changes that are needed to boost educational attainment and economic competitiveness across the country falls heavily on entities that coordinate public postsecondary institutions. Coordination of postsecondary education, whether of a single system of institutions or across an entire state, requires…

Educational Policy Improvement Center (EPIC) researchers visited 38 public high schools around the United States in 2007 and 2008 with the goal of validating and operationalizing a definition of college readiness. Schools in the sample were selected because they were demonstrating success at enabling more students from underrepresented groups to…

"Linking Workforce Development to Economic Development: A Casebook for Community Colleges" is a compilation of best practice examples, which illustrate what it takes for community colleges to achieve their goal of helping people acquire education and skills, helping employers, supporting communities, and building the nation. The book is…

This report summarizes preliminary and exploratory research conducted by the Council of the Great City Schools and the American Institutes for Research on urban school systems participating in the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The study is one of the first large-scale analyses…

"From the Courtroom to the Classroom" examines recent developments pertaining to school desegregation in the United States. As the editors note, it comes at a time marked by a "general downplaying of race and ethnicity as criteria for the allocation of public resources, as well as a weakening of the political forces that support…