This study explores the impact of attending optional professional learning events on the critical consciousness development of Ready to Learn (RtL) mentors over the course of one program year. Ready to Learn is an out of school time math tutoring and mentoring program that seeks to address opportunity gaps in math learning for middle school…

The Learning Communities Demonstration is a national research project that is testing the effectiveness of learning communities in six community colleges across the United States: Merced College in California; The Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC) in Baltimore, Maryland; Hillsborough Community College in Tampa, Florida; Houston…

The Kalamazoo Promise was announced in the fall of 2005, offering free college tuition at any public state college or university for graduates of the district who have gained acceptance to a postsecondary institution. This program was funded through the generous support of anonymous donors, and a federally-funded evaluation is underway to examine…

How leaders learn to become leaders has been an area of much research. When asked what were the key experiences in learning leadership, leaders often speak of the importance of "on-the-job" experiences, yet these experiences are rarely fully detailed in the research literature. The importance of "apprenticeships" and being…

The Academy for Educational Development (AED) sent a research team to the University of Dayton (UD) on November 5-7, 2008, to conduct interviews with individuals who played significant roles in the university's teacher preparation program (see Appendix A). These interviews, along with additional materials provided by UD and identified by the AED…

In October 2002, the multiple and single subject credential programs at a large urban Los Angeles Basin California State University campus, were approved as Early Adopters of the SB 2042 Professional Teacher Preparation Program. These programs resulted from a complex and multi-faceted process of change supported and influenced by reform…

One of a series on critical issues in vocational-technical education, this paper applies the National Advisory Council on Vocational Education recommendations concerning urban vocational education to a specific inner city school system, the Durham, North Carolina, Public School System, which is seen as a microcosm of our large urban systems. Issue…

Designed as a technical resource, this paper provides information related to adoption of National Diffusion Network (NDN) programs in urban districts with populations in excess of 300,000. Data were drawn from a survey mailed to all NDN participants in early 1978, and are presented in four sections, mostly in the form of graphs, tables and charts.…

This study analyzed the effectiveness of a mentoring program in which 18 experienced teachers were released from teaching duties to act as full-time mentors for 10 new teachers each in an urban school district. Analysis of data gathered via surveys of and interviews with beginning teachers, principals, and mentors indicated that: (1) teaching in a…

The purpose of this report is to examine the need for integration of various basic skills resources. The report concentrates on the comparison of data in the areas of policy, program integration, attitude and planning, student achievement, and cost effectiveness of the categorically-funded programs. Federal and local studies on compensatory…

This report examines the process of school reform in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) during the last half of the 1995-96 school year. It focuses on the progress of the Children Achieving initiative in the first 6 of the projected 22 clusters and considers 11 schools in these 6 clusters in detail. The focus of work in this first year of operation was…

Describes the Pathways program at Armstrong Atlantic State University, which attempts to answer Georgia's need for minority teachers by offering noncertified school district employees, most of whom are paraprofessionals, tuition and support so that they can earn degrees leading to teacher certification. Factors leading to program success are…

During 1985-86 the School Community Education Program (also known as the Umbrella Program), funded by the New York State Legislature, provided a variety of educational and training experiences to some 25,871 participants, including pre-kindergarten children and their parents; and students, teachers and supervisors from kindergarten through grade…

This report, compiled by the Urban Education Task Force (under the Department of Health Education and Welfare), offers both a comprehensive analysis of the crisis in urban education and recommendations for the future. Chapters cover: the financial crisis of the urban schools, urban education as a system, the impoverished urban student, and the…

Philadelphia's school reform initiative, Children Achieving" was evaluated. The focus in this report is on decentralization, exploring how Children Achieving is strengthening schools' capacity to make and carry out informed decisions that lead to schoolwide standards, how the new structures are working at various levels of the system, and how…