This resource was prepared in response to a request from a Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC) State for information about the Transformation Zones that 10 RTT-ELC States had included as key projects in their RTT-ELC plans. This information will be helpful to other States as they consider how to continue to increase the quality of…

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently announced the release of its 2010 Notice of Funding Availability for the Homeless Assistance Programs that it administers. As a result of the passage of the HEARTH Act, there are four new requirements for HUD-funded homeless service programs related to education. These…

One objective of the U.S. Department of Education's (ED) School Improvement Grants (SIG) and Race to the Top (RTT) program is to help states enhance their capacity to support the turnaround of low-performing schools. This capacity may be important, given how difficult it is to produce substantial and sustained achievement gains in low-performing…

In late 2010, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Rajiv Shah commissioned a new Agency-wide Education Strategy to ensure that USAID's global education investments would be informed by recent Presidential policy guidance; grounded in the most current evidence-based analysis of educational effectiveness; and aimed at…

Educational reform in the United States is perpetually evolving. Much of the recent reforms have concentrated on high-stakes testing and assessment, but a parallel effort has been emerging in the field of vocational and career education. Prompted partly by federal legislation--most recently by the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act…

In 2009 the Obama administration announced a focused commitment to turn around 5,000 of the United States' chronically lowest-performing public schools as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). This commitment came with $3 billion in funding for the School Improvement Grant program, or SIG, along with new guidelines to ensure…

The federal School Improvement Grants (SIG) program aims to improve student achievement by promoting the implementation of four school intervention models: transformation, turnaround, restart, and closure. Previous research provides evidence that low-performing schools adopt some practices promoted by the four models, but little is known about how…

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA) requires states and the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) to define and determine whether schools are making adequate yearly progress (AYP) toward meeting the goal of 100 percent academic proficiency. To address tribes' needs for cultural preservation, NCLBA allows tribal groups to…

A key assumption of the Concerns Based Adoption Model (CBAM) is that change is a process, rather than an event. The Procedures for Adopting Educational Innovations Project is working to identify and verify diagnostic dimensions of CBAM, and to develop tools to measure the developmental status of users and non-users; these concepts will help change…

Most current theories about consultation may be subsumed under two models. In the purchase model, an organization defines its problem and hires a consultant. In the doctor- patient model, a consultant diagnoses an implied need and suggests remediation. A third approach, process consultation, recognizes the value of the clients' expertise in…

This study evaluated the national network of Technical Assistance Centers (TACs), which provides technical assistance in evaluation and program improvement to state and local educational agencies responsible for implementing programs under Chapter 1 of the Education Consolidation and Improvement Act (ECIA). The U.S. Department of Education…

This book is the fourth of four volumes in a directory of more than 1,000 discretionary grants and contracts supported by the Research to Practice Division of the Office of Special Education Programs. This volume focuses on projects concerned with technical assistance, dissemination, parent information, and state improvement. The Technical…

This report outlines the major rural development programs and initiatives of the Department of Agriculture and other federal agencies. Diverse economic realities make necessary differential rural development policies and programs. The federal budget deficit makes it necessary that the government use creative and efficient management techniques to…

Program improvement activities can be classified into four categories based on the source of the impetus and the locus of the change agent: systematic, symbolic, opportunistic, and pragmatic. This paper (1) describes the various approaches to implementing Chapter 1 program improvement activities at the state and local district levels in 13 western…

This monograph presents the proceedings of two symposia on assistive technology for people with disabilities in Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, the Federated States of Micronesia, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Republic of the Marshall Islands, and Palau. Following an overview, Sections 1 and 2 contain the presentations and…