The guide is designed to address concerns of North Carolina second/foreign language teachers and school administrators as they plan and implement block class scheduling. The first section outlines the rationale and special considerations for block scheduling, and offers some typical schedule options. North Carolina's instructional time…

Smart Start is North Carolina's partnership between state government and local leaders, service providers, and families to better serve children under age 6 and their families. The aim of the program is ensuring that all children enter school healthy and ready to learn. This study examined parent and business involvement in local Smart Start…

Over the past 25 years, five large-scale research studies of community college students have been conducted in North Carolina, involving cooperation between Duke University, North Carolina State University, and the North Carolina Department of Community Colleges. The different research strategies employed in these studies can be seen as taking one…

A project was conducted to develop a model for evaluating placement testing in the North Carolina System of Community Colleges. Researchers at Central Piedmont Community College conducted a longitudinal study of students' progress through the college curriculum as it related to placement test scores. The following numbers of students comprised the…

This document contains a brief report on the development of a county-wide day care program which serves more than 400 children at 12 facilities in housing projects or churches in both black and white low income communities. The report describes the initial project development, the physical facilities, and progress made at staff development and…

This monograph describes the development, implementation, and outcomes of the full-day, literacy-focused Bright Beginnings program for disadvantaged preschoolers in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) in North Carolina. Key components of Bright Beginnings are a child-centered curriculum with strong language development and literacy emphasis,…

This paper is part of a collection of 54 papers from the 48th annual conference of the Education Law Association held in November 2002. It discusses teacher evaluation by principals. Specifically, it presents findings of research that examined the nature of policy creation at the local board level in response to accountability legislation in North…

This final report summarizes the activities of a federally funded project designed to prepare higher education faculty to serve as leaders in providing and promoting quality interprofessional preservice instruction in their states. SCRIPT enhanced and replicated a validated model that had previously been developed, implemented and evaluated in 20…

In 1990, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) included a Trial State Assessment (TSA); for the first time in the NAEP's history, voluntary state-by-state assessments were made. The sample was designed to represent the 8th grade public school population in a state or territory. In 1996, 44 states, the District of Columbia, Guam,…

In North Carolina, Alternative Learning Programs (ALP) is a designation applied to a variety of activities, locations, and student characteristics. This report focuses on descriptive information about the state's ALP efforts, teachers, and the students they serve. Two hundred and fifteen schools and programs met the evaluation criteria as ALPs.…

The extent of developmentally appropriate practices was studied in 103 kindergarten classrooms across North Carolina. Ninety-three teachers and 93 principals were also surveyed to determine predictors of classroom quality. Only 20 percent of the classes met criteria for developmental appropriateness, and quality was predictable from teacher and…

"VIEW: An Assessment of Problem Solving Style" (Selby, Treffinger, & Isaksen, 2002) is a new instrument for assessing problem-solving style, for use with individuals from ages 12 through adult. It measures three dimensions of style relating to creative problem solving and change management. In this article, we discuss the…

This proceedings includes the following papers: "The 'Thoughtful' Health Practitioner: A Study of a Theoretical Basis for Critical Inquiry Regarding Liberal Arts in Health Professions Curricula" (Mary Jo Belenski); "Secondary School Vocational Program Performance Standards and Measures: Virginia's System of Locally Directed…

This publication provides the basic statistics needed to illustrate the impact of North Carolina's Basic Education Program (BEP), an educational reform effort begun in 1985. Over 85% of the positions in the BEP are directly related to teaching and student-related activities. The new BEP programs result in smaller class sizes in kindergartens and…

Carolina PALS (Programmed Alternative Learning for Students) is a program designed to meet the educational, social, and emotional needs of students with mild disabilities in grades 3-10, by having one special education teacher and one regular teacher share teaching in the regular classroom. In 1992-93, the program operated in 50 schools, reaching…