USD 240 Twin Valley School District, consisting of Bennington Grade School and Bennington Junior High/High School in Bennington and Tescott Grade School and Tescott Junior High/High School, was one of seven districts initially selected in August 2017 as part of the first cohort of Kansas State Department of Education's Kansas Can School Redesign…

This article examines the meaning of the word "inclusion" as it relates to Catholic identity in higher education. Noting the widespread presence of this value in the mission statements of Catholic colleges, the article draws on insights from Aristotelian logic and Pope Francis's theology of encounter to argue that inclusion can only be…

The Forum Guide to Reporting Civil Rights Data presents a variety of effective methods through which local education agencies (LEAs) report civil rights data to the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights. In addition, the guide provides examples of how state education agencies can voluntarily help their LEAs with Civil Rights Data…

Sixty-six school districts and more than 150 schools in the state of Kansas are participating in the Kansans Can Redesign Project. In this article, we present a case study of using Design Thinking as a systemic process to structure continuous school improvement. The collage of real-life scenarios presented in our case shows the integration of…

The authors discuss the long-term accumulation of unstandardized and inaccessible content within the Libguides system and the decision-making process to create and implement a set of standards using the migration to the LibGuides2 platform as a vehicle for change. Included in the discussion are strategies for the creation of standards and…

This article reports on the collaborative efforts undertaken for systematic statewide support for the recruitment, development, and retention of quality leaders in schools and school districts in Kansas, USA. The author presents the case of a strong sense of "collaboration" that made the difference and stimulated movement from vision…

How something begins can matter a lot, especially for young adults. "The circumstances under which a person enters a profession is predictive of how that person will view the profession for the rest of his or her life." The goal is for that view to be positive and long lasting for social studies educators. Can more be done to support…

To be effective, teachers must be prepared to collaborate with families to support student success. Many studies confirm that strong parent-teacher relationships relate to positive student outcomes, such as healthy social development, high student achievement, and high rates of college enrollment. Thus, by giving teachers the support they need to…

One goal of the National Forum on Education Statistics is to improve the quality of education data gathered for use by policymakers and program decision-makers. One approach to furthering this goal has been to pool the collective experiences of Forum members to produce "best practice" guides in areas of high interest to those who…

Higher education institutions are confronted with increasing demand for electronic access to educational opportunities, improved academic quality and accountability, and new academic programs that address societal workforce and economic development needs. Collaboration allows institutions to combine resources to respond efficiently and effectively…

For 10 months in 1929-30, subscribers to "The McCook (Nebraska) Daily Gazette" (a daily newspaper serving 33 towns in southwestern Nebraska and northwestern Kansas) received their newspapers via air delivery with "The Newsboy," a Curtis Robin cabin monoplane. In an age when over-the-road travel was difficult and air travel was…

Storytelling is a performance medium which is enhanced by the qualities indigenous to small towns: collective memory and common history. A type of narrative peculiar to small towns, the community-wide anecdote, is one example of storytelling. The transmittal of such tales is termed "endemic performance" because the retelling of the tales…

This chapter explores the role of the president as enabler and leader in promoting a foundation that is engaged with the community and responsive to the college mission. It uses as its foundation a case study of Johnson County Community College (JCCC), where the president's involvement in the community educates the community about the college,…

The authors explore the extent to which a mature professional development school (PDS) partnership at Kansas State University (KSU) helps link the disparate parts of the social studies education community. The authors initially identify and describe the divisions or "gulfs" that commonly plague social studies education, such as the gulfs…

This article discusses the tricks of the trade that legislatures in formerly de jure segregated states might use to maintain racial funding disparities in existence before Brown and whether such ploys might be vulnerable to legal challenges. The first section provides an overview of modern school finance formulas and explains how legislatures in…