College students have a better chance of succeeding in school when they receive high-quality advising. High-quality advising, when characterized by frequent communications between advisers and students, early outreach to students showing signs of academic or nonacademic struggles, and personalized guidance that addresses individual student needs,…

Pennsylvania Pre-K Counts (PA PKC) is a state-funded prekindergarten program for 3- and 4-year-old children to help them gain school readiness skills. The goal of PA PKC is to help reduce educational disparities by providing high quality prekindergarten for children who lack opportunities or reside in environments that place them at risk of school…

Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting legislation permits states to fund "promising practices"--with the understanding that these models will have a rigorous evaluation component. This article describes an innovative, low cost paraprofessional home visiting model developed in Pennsylvania by the Maternity Care Coalition. In…

Pennsylvania Pre-K Counts (PA PKC) is a state-funded prekindergarten program for 3- and 4- year-old children to help them gain school readiness skills. The goal of PA PKC is to help reduce educational disparities by providing high quality prekindergarten for children who lack opportunities or reside in environments that place them at risk of…

The Early Learning Challenge (ELC) program awarded more than $1 billion in four-year grants to 20 States to implement comprehensive and cohesive high-quality early learning systems that support young children with high needs and their families. A key lever in making these improvements was the enhancement of States' Quality Rating and Improvement…

With a focus on leadership, this study examines the leadership characteristics of principals in schools that are recognized as National Blue Ribbon Schools by the United States Department of Education. This mixed methodology study utilizes the causal comparative method to compare what teachers consider to be effective leadership characteristics of…

The importance of college degree completion for U.S. society and economic competitiveness makes it imperative to improve educational outcomes for Latino students. Institutional leaders, educators, and policymakers who recognize this imperative are challenged to determine what they can do to improve educational outcomes for Latino students.…

Introduction: Mentoring is a central component of professional development. Evaluation of "successful" mentoring programs, however, has been limited and mainly focused on measures of satisfaction with the relationship. In today's environment, mentoring programs must produce tangible outcomes to demonstrate success. To address this issue,…

The School Library Media Services Division of the Pennsylvania Department of Education administered the operation of AdvancE as Pennsylvania's adult education clearinghouse. The goal of the project was to provide Pennsylvania's adult educators with prompt access to information and resources to help them implement the most effective administrative…

Since the inception of the School-to-Work Project in 1998, networks members have increasingly viewed credible evidence as critical to both their approaches to program improvement and their strategies for winning and sustaining support and resources. This issue brief: (1) Describes the activities Network members have pursued together during…

Fifth and sixth grade students from the State College Area School District (Pennsylvania) participated in a 5-day resident outdoor education program to investigate the effectiveness of such a program on the development of cognitive learning processes. Students were divided into experimental and control groups of one fifth and one sixth grade class…

This analysis of the impact of a result demonstration educational program was made in an effort to achieve the following goals: (1) identification of the objectives of the educational program; (2) description of the program; (3) assessment of awareness of the program by target clientele; (4) measurement of the amount of change that takes place;…

The followup study of 1974 graduates of two Pennsylvania high school districts (Hazleton and Williamsport) is phase 4 of the vocational development study, a 10-year longitudinal study begun in 1968. Phase 4 evaluates the effectiveness of the school programs in preparing students for the world of work or for postsecondary education and examines the…

The internship program for undergraduate-level community health students at Slippery Rock University in Butler, Pennsylvania, is designed as a capstone experience bridging the gap from academia to practice. Students in the internship program spend 12 weeks during the summer of their senior year working in any health organization of their choice,…

Early state and local progress toward implementation of the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 (WIA) was reviewed. Data were collected through visits to selected sites in Florida, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, and Vermont and a 90-item Workforce System Information and Evaluation (WSIE) data collection form. The following aspects of WIA…