Enrollment is rising across the nation's community colleges, but completion rates remain untenably low. Reformers are focusing on the importance of using comprehensive, high-quality data on student progress and completion to bring about change. A core tenet of Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count has been to embed a culture of…

Established in 2006 by New Leaders for New Schools[TM], the Effective Practice Incentive Community (EPIC) initiative rewards high-need urban schools showing significant gains in student achievement. In exchange, schools agree to share the practices helping to drive those gains, which they do through an in-depth study of practice, aided by the EPIC…

Students with emotional and behavioral disorders are at great risk for long-term negative outcomes. Researchers and practitioners alike acknowledge the need for evidence-based, preventive, and early intervention strategies. Accordingly, in this chapter an expanded view of prevention is presented as a series of data driven decisions to guide…

States are making progress in supporting effective data use, but the hardest work remains. Although states collect quality data and have enacted policy changes, they have not yet focused on meeting people's needs. This report includes the following: (1) Changing the Culture of Education Data Takes Systems, Policies, and People; (2) Data for Action…

There's much talk about using data to inform education decision-making, both in and beyond the classroom. This paper examines the landscape of data literacy, based on a meeting in May 2012 which brought together the foremost researchers and professional development providers in the field of data-driven decision-making in education. The meeting…

As use of geospatial technologies has increased in the workplace, so has interest in using these technologies in the K-12 classroom. Prior research has identified several reasons for using geospatial technologies in the classroom, such as developing spatial thinking, supporting local investigations, analyzing changes in the environment, and…

This article investigates the association between social capital and education in Jhabua, a tribal dominated district of central India. The case study analysis showed a disconnection between social capital and education in the majority of the villages. However, two of the fourteen villages showed that empowerment of the civil society made formal…

This article presents the results of an investigation into the qualities and qualifications sought in distance education leaders by institutions of higher education in the United States. The researchers examined 191 distance education leadership position announcements posted by online sources between 1997 and 2010. Content analysis of these…

Children with complex communication needs (CCN) resulting from autism spectrum disorders, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome and other disabilities are severely restricted in their participation in educational, vocational, family, and community environments. There is a substantial body of research that demonstrates convincingly that children with CCN…

At thousands of schools and universities, years of economic troubles have led to repeated budget cuts. The reductions typically fall disproportionately on maintenance departments, where cuts are viewed as less critical than those that directly affect classroom instruction. And so nearly every facility manager at an education institution faces a…

Growing enrollment in distance education has increased student-to-lecturer ratios and, therefore, increased the workload of the lecturer. This growing enrollment has resulted in mounting efforts to develop automatic grading systems in an effort to reduce this workload. While research in the design and development of automatic grading systems has a…

Surveys and benchmarks continue to grow in importance for community colleges in response to several factors. One is the press for accountability, that is, for colleges to report the outcomes of their programs and services to demonstrate their quality and prudent use of resources, primarily to external constituents and governing boards at the state…

The article describes the findings of a pilot study of the Life Story Board (LSB), a novel visual information system with a play board and sets of magnetic cards designed to be a practical clinical tool for counsellors, therapists, and researchers. The LSB is similar to a multidimensional genogram, and serves as a platform to depict personal…

In an age when information, management and technology are supposed to be hand-in-hand, there is often a rift between these elements when considering people and comportment. The detachment is caused by a distressing lack of understanding between Information Systems (IS)/Information Technology (IT) students and professionals and those they interact…

School improvement can be a complex, messy business. At its most basic, school improvement is change--change that might require people to abandon long-held beliefs and practices, shift roles, and learn new skills. Kilgore and Reynolds (2011) suggested that successful change requires that people change their perceptions as well as their actions.…