The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) is a nonprofit organization that works collaboratively with Virginia and 15 other member states to improve education at every level--from pre-K to postdoctoral study--through many effective programs and initiatives. SREB's "Challenge to Lead" Goals for Education, which call for the region to…

Overweight children would not be the first thing a visitor to Grafton, West Virginia, would think of when seeing the small farms that cling to steep hillsides and cultivate the bottomland along the Tygart River as one drives into town. Like most of the state, the landscape around this village nods to pastoral enterprise, suggesting a place where…

This guide for the 1999 Virginia teen summer reading program for public libraries, "Read around the World," includes the following chapters: (1) "Reading and Teens," including serving the underserved, tips for teens, and a recipe for choosing a book to read for fun; (2) "Programming and Teens," including "The Why…

For five years running, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) has tracked states' teacher policies, preparing a detailed and thorough compendium of teacher policy in the United States on topics related to teacher preparation, licensure, evaluation, career advancement, tenure, compensation, pensions and dismissal. The "2011 State…

Designed to supplement the Agriscience Education for the Middle School curriculum guide, this instructional packet provides lessons to enable agriscience teachers to bring basic science concepts into the classroom through practical, hands-on activities and experiments. The course is designed to assist seventh-grade students in exploring science as…

This study was conducted to determine how well the Degrees of Reading Power (DRP) correctly identifies children who are experiencing reading difficulties and to describe more precisely the characteristics of children who have been identified as poor readers so that program planners can design more effective remedial instruction. The DRP and…

The results of a statewide survey of the professional preparation and current leadership practices of middle and intermediate school principals in relation to reading programs are described in this paper. The first section of the paper describes the survey questions in the areas of professional preparation of middle school principals, current…

How can middle school counselors identify bullies? This study compared two methods of identifying bullies in a sample of 386 middle school students. A peer nomination survey identified many more bullies than did student self-report. Moreover, self-reported and peer nominated bullies differed in their types of bullying behaviors, level of general…

Designed to supplement the Agriscience Education for the Middle School curriculum guide, this instructional packet provides lessons to enable agriscience teachers to bring basic science concepts into the classroom through practical, hands-on activities and experiments. The course is designed to develop in sixth-grade students an awareness of the…

This unit explores Virginia society between 1640 and 1680. By examining copies of original documents, students study the causes of Bacon's Rebellion in 1676. Although the rebellion was a failure, understanding the reasons for the conflict gives insight into colonial Virginia. Students learn that Virginia was initially a predominantly male society…

A study was conducted to determine the effect of the locally developed program of career orientation implemented in the Danville, Virginia, middle schools in August 1976, on the career development and academic achievement of students in grades 5, 6, and 7. A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest control group design was used for the evaluation, and…

Recruitment attitudes and behaviors of home economics teachers were studied. Findings indicate that greater emphasis in preservice teacher education should be placed upon recruitment techniques, home economics career education should be taught at the middle school/junior high level, and college-university home economics faculty should speak to…

Bullying studies frequently rely on student self-report to identify bullies and victims of bullying, but research in the broader field of peer aggression makes greater use of other informants, especially peers, to identify aggressors and victims. This study compared self, peer, and teacher identification of bullies and bully victims in a sample of…

This collection of abstracts provides descriptions of exemplary vocational guidance and counseling projects funded in Virginia through Title II (Vocational Education) of Public Law 94-482. The abstracts describe programs to improve vocational guidance for special needs persons (disadvantaged, handicapped) as well as those to improve vocational…

To counter gender bias effects and improve student learning, staff at a Virginia middle school decided to group eighth-grade students by gender for math and science instruction. Girls felt freer to speak out. Grade point averages in gender-based science and math classes for both girls and boys were higher than in coeducational classes. (MLH)