Quality Rating System (QRS) initiatives define levels of quality based on research and then support providers with funding and technical assistance to increase their quality. Each program is assessed and given a number of "stars" to indicate to parents what level of quality the program has reached. In this article, the author describes…

Community coalitions (CCs) have labored with some difficulty to demonstrate empirical evidence of effectiveness in preventing a wide range of adolescent problem behaviors. Training and technical assistance (TA) have been identified as important elements in promoting improved functioning of CCs. A reliable, valid, and inexpensive method to assess…

Women farmers are underserved in agricultural education and technical assistance. Long held social constructions of farming women as "farmwives" and in some cases "the bookkeepers" rather than farmers or decision-makers influence the direction of most educational programming delivered through extension programs in land-grant…

Regional Educational Service Agencies (RESAs)--agencies between the state and local level--are an important resource for helping local educators cope with a variety of pressures from an increasingly complex environment. They do so by performing two functions. Political linkage provides knowledge about the impacts of mandates on specific districts…

Pennsylvania's Secondary Instructional Support program addresses such problems as failing grades, lack of classroom participation, lack of time on task, difficulties with basic skills, and poor attendance. It provides school districts with training and guided practice in six areas: collaboration, instructional assessment, instructional adaptation,…

This paper presents a profile of Pennsylvania's Keystone STARS prepared as part of the Child Care Quality Rating System (QRS) Assessment Study. The profile consists of several sections and their corresponding descriptions including: (1) Program Information; (2) Rating Details; (3) Quality Indicators for Center-Based Programs; (4) Indicators for…

The Communities of Practice approach offers state agency personnel a lens for exploring the human aspects of problems. They can be used as a technical assistance approach for bringing together multiple stakeholders to address complex issues facing special education. The IDEA Partnership has pioneered the use of a website for its national…

This report summarizes accomplishments of the ESCAPE (Eastern Stream Child Abuse Prevention and Education) Project over its final two years and identifies products developed under its auspices during this period. An introduction describes the project which was initiated in 1982 to establish and reduce the incidence of child maltreatment in the…

The Urban Development Component at Research for Better Schools, Inc., attempted to attack problems facing urban secondary schools in Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania by using the "natural channels" of educational and civic associations to disseminate research and development information and to work collaboratively toward improving…

Considerations in the design and implementation of the technical assistance (TA) system for supporting Pennsylvania's statewide school improvement initiative are analyzed. After a brief introduction, the authors describe the key features of the initiative, called Long-Range Planning for School Improvement (LRPSI). They briefly review recent…

The National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) documents dimensions of quality in undergraduate education and provides information and assistance to colleges, universities, and other organizations to improve student learning. Its primary activity is annually surveying college students to assess the extent to which they engage in educational…

The primary objective of the Success Stories: From Learning to Leadership project, which was conducted by a private consulting firm, was to provide technical assistance to the Pennsylvania Department of Education's Bureau of Adult Basic and Literacy Education (ABLE) in its efforts to select and recognize the achievements of 10 outstanding ABLE…

A long-range school improvement program, under the direction of the Pennsylvania State Department of Education, was developed to coordinate and articulate the curriculum, as well as to structure school management and other district operations. Featured in the plan are: (1) a statewide testing program called "Educational Quality…

A description is given of the structure and operation of 29 intermediate administrative units which provide consulting, advisory, administrative, or statistical services to local school districts in Pennsylvania. The basic services rendered by the units are in the areas of: (1) curriculum development and instructional improvement; (2) management;…

The Northwest Pennsylvania Industrial Resource Center's "wood cluster initiative" illustrates the benefits of rural business clusters. The initiative is turning a loose grouping of timber and forest-product firms into a competitive system by providing technical assistance, helping businesses plan and conduct job training programs,…