At the request of the State of Pennsylvania, the School District of Philadelphia, in the summer of 2002, asked three for-profit firms to assume responsibility for 30 of its lowest-performing schools and it asked four nonprofit managers to assume the management of 16 other low-performing schools. A difference-in-differences analysis is used to…

The Penn-Delco School District in Pennsylvania uses a walk-through process focused on looking at student work and talking with individual students. The purpose is to ascertain what those students are able to express about their own learning. At the beginning of each year, a committee of teachers at each of the district's schools meets to identify…

The authors conducted design or classroom experiments (R. Gersten, S. Baker, & J. W. Lloyd, 2000) at 2 sites (Pennsylvania and Florida) to test the effectiveness of schema-based instruction (SBI) prior to conducting formal experimental studies. Results of Study 1 conducted in 2 3rd-grade, low-ability classrooms and 1 special education…

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) asks that states "restructure" schools that fail for six years running to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) toward full proficiency on the part of all students by the year 2014. Although restructuring efforts by most states have been modest, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 2002, directed the School District…

STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT AND ATTITUDE TOWARD SCHOOL SUBJECTS WERE STUDIED IN RELATION TO TEACHER FEEDBACK AND TEACHER ATTITUDE. THE STUDY SAMPLE CONSISTED OF 10TH GRADERS AND TEACHERS FROM 14 HIGH SCHOOLS. FIVE TREATMENTS OF TEACHER FEEDBACK WERE IMPLEMENTED AND EVALUATED--(1) STUDENT RATINGS OF TEACHERS WERE SENT TO THE TEACHERS BY MAIL SEVERAL TIMES…

THE EAGLE PROGRAM AT WANAMAKER JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL IN PHILADELPHIA IS BASED ON THE ASSUMPTION THAT HUMAN BEHAVIOR CAN BE MODIFIED. CULTURAL ENRICHMENT OF DISADVANTAGED CHILDREN SHOULD THUS EFFECT A CHANGE IN THE ASPIRATIONAL, ACHIEVEMENT, AND ADJUSTMENT PATTERNS WHICH THEY TEND TO FOLLOW. AIMS OF THE PROGRAM ARE TO PROVIDE EDUCATIONAL, CULTURAL,…

This research is a follow up to a similar study published by the Center for Rural Pennsylvania in 2003 in which researchers examined alternative education policies and practices among Pennsylvania school districts. The current study extended the previous research to include information on the perceptions of administrators and teachers on the…

Previous studies have reported that disadvantaged children tend to loose the skills and abilities they had acquired in special and/or intervention programs when they are placed in education settings which do not support their needs. Since the 1970 census data tended to indicate that the pupil composition of the schools had changed, it became…

This report describes a study of the impact of certain educational inputs on the rate of growth in achievement for various types of students in Philadelphia's public schools. Data for the analysis were drawn from pupil histories of 627 students from 103 elementary schools, 553 students from 42 junior high schools, and 716 students from 5 senior…

This research was conducted using a multi-case study analysis of four school districts in Western Pennsylvania. All four of the school districts were placed under the guidelines of the Educational Empowerment Act (Act 16) due to a history of low tests scores and poor student achievement. These school districts were also place on the State's…

This paper surveys some of the teaching methods, learning activities, and programs either proposed or already used by some Pennsylvania schools to improve their students' performance on the Educational Quality Assessment. The assessment, mandated by Pennsylvania statute, measures student achievement in ten goal areas, such as self-esteem, verbal…

PROPOSED IS A PROJECT TO REORGANIZE THE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT IN FIVE DISADVANTAGED AREA ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS SERVING IN-MIGRANT, TRANSIENT CHILDREN. IT IS BELIEVED THAT THESE STUDENTS WILL IMPROVE THEIR ACHIEVEMENT IN ENGLISH, SOCIAL STUDIES, AND ARITHMETIC. NEW TEACHING METHODS WILL BE DEVELOPED, AND PARENTS WILL BE ENCOURAGED TO PLACE A GREATER…

This paper describes the history, characteristics, program model, activities, and evaluation results of the Pottstown Homework Center Partnership project, in Pottstown County, Pennsylvania. The goal of the program is to initiate homework centers and train volunteer tutors from the community to support the at-risk middle students by providing…

The IADIS CELDA 2012 Conference intention was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There had been advances in both cognitive psychology and computing that have affected the educational arena. The convergence of these two disciplines is increasing at a…