Special education in Baltimore City--the educational program for students with certain mental, emotional, or physical disabilities--has been a nagging, intractable, and very public problem for at least 25 years. Community leaders have been mindful of the inequities that undermine the education of students with disabilities and continue to address…

Project Yi Jin was developed to provide an alternative route to higher education for students who failed the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination to gain academic status for and access to higher education. The project provides a 1-year full-time program that includes 600 contact hours of instruction in 10 subjects--7 core subjects and 3…

This report compares South Carolina's reading and mathematics performance on the most recent administrations of the state assessment with performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). To indicate how South Carolina is doing in narrowing the academic achievement gap between African American and Latino students and their…

This document presents state-level data on South Dakota's K-college education, including demographic distribution across each educational level, participation and success in Advanced Placement, percentage of students taking high-level courses, school funding gaps, and high school and college graduation rates. South Dakota's 2002 Stanford 9 results…

This paper examines the latest elementary, middle school, and district level Maryland student achievement and teacher experience data to argue that schools today are segregated not only along student backgrounds, but also along teacher expertise. The very students who need school the most to break out of the intergenerational cycle of poverty and…

Examines one community's efforts to fundamentally alter a high school's structure, curriculum, and instructional practices to provide greater educational opportunities for all students. The program used heterogeneous grouping in tandem with curricular and pedagogical changes. Student surveys indicated that the program was moderately successful in…

Standards-based reform is a strategy that includes specifying what is to be learned, devising tests to measure learning, and establishing consequences of performance for students and schools. Popular support remains strong for standards-based reform, according to national polling data as well as local data in the states implementing this strategy.…

Concerned that most of the education reform debate of the 1980s has ignored the needs of girls, the American Association of University Women (AAUW) has launched its Initiative for Educational Equity. The first steps in this initiative were twofold. First, a survey of 3,000 fourth through tenth grade students, girls and boys from across the…

The New York City Board of Education formed the Latino Commission on Educational Reform to examine issues of concern to Latino children who comprise an increasing segment of the students in the public school system. An interim report was submitted on the dropout rate, curriculum and instruction, support services, parent and community empowerment,…

As desegregation alternatives to busing are explored in the Dallas school district, educational equity remains a priority. Components and goals of the Dallas educational equity plan are presented in this address. The two most consistent challenges are recruiting minority staff and getting white students to attend schools in predominantly minority…

A group of three brief conference papers, all concerned with methods to help Limited English Proficient (LEP) students succeed, is presented in this document. The first paper, "Integrated Content Language Approach" (Jose Galvan), suggests that LEP students who are at the intermediate level or beyond will benefit from programs integrating…

A group of seven conference papers, all dealing with the role of testing and evaluation in the schools, is presented in this document. The papers are as follows: (1) "Framework for Effective Schools" (Eric Cooper), which identifies indicators of efficacy, quality, and equity; (2) "Quality Indicators for Monitoring Equity"…

This research report is comprised of a series of 14 papers, each accompanied by a bibliography. Murnane's nine self-contained articles are grouped into four projects. The first consists of three papers that interpret the results of quantitative research on school effectiveness in a manner that highlights the active behaviors of participants and…

Volume I of a five-volume study of the trends in segregation of Hispanic students in public schools contains a review of relevant litigation and legislation dating from the 1850's and notes the almost negligible effect on Hispanic desegregation of such landmark events as the 1954 "Brown" decision and the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The…

"Straight A's: Public Education Policy and Progress" is a biweekly newsletter that focuses on education news and events both in Washington, DC and around the country. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) Graduation for All, A Right and a Responsibility: National Campaign to Focus on Increasing High School Graduation…