The five-year initiative New Skills for Youth (NSFY) aimed to transform career readiness education and bridge the skills gap by supporting innovative strategies in 10 states across the United States. NSFY was one of the earliest and most impactful philanthropic investments in career pathways and career readiness in recent history and helped spark…

The purpose of this paper is to present recommendations for conducting outreach in order to further the efforts in the counseling field towards social justice and advocacy. Informed by Freire's (2000) critical consciousness theory, examples of culturally centered counseling services are presented as outcomes of the experiences of participants.…

This paper summarizes activities associated with school-improvement projects in 12 Louisiana School Effectiveness and Assistance Pilot Study (SEAP) Cohort One schools during school year 1997-98 and plans for future improvement activities in 1998-99. Faculty and administrators at each school were asked to revise their current school-improvement…

Outlines the findings of a qualitative and primarily formative evaluation of Louisiana's Networking Infrastructures for Education pilot program to help develop a statewide educational technology network. This evaluation primarily focused on efforts to incorporate Internet applications for math and science curriculum in elementary and secondary…

Six papers discuss the Louisiana School Effectiveness and Assistance Pilot (SEAP) program, an ongoing 3-year research project associated with a legislatively mandated school and district accountability program. In three phases, the project joins school indicators, school effectiveness, and school improvement initiatives. The following papers are…

A preliminary set of analyses was conducted linking students to courses and courses to teachers based upon data collected by the Louisiana Department of Education's Divisions of Planning, Analysis, and Information Resources and Student Standards and Assessments. An analysis of covariance, a weighted analysis of covariance, and a hierarchical…

The Biology Intensive Orientation for Students (BIOS) Program was designed to assess the impact of a 5-d intensive prefreshman program on success and retention of biological science majors at Louisiana State University. The 2005 pilot program combined content lectures and examinations for BIOL 1201, Introductory Biology for Science Majors, as well…

The Louisiana Intern Teacher Assessment Program, part of the Louisiana Teacher Appraisal System, began with a preliminary field test, followed by a pilot test and implementation in 1993-94. Evaluation of the preliminary field test was conducted through responses of 223 assessors, intern teachers, principals, and assessor trainers to nine different…