National Education   Federal Education State of Pennsylvania Education Bucks County, PA Education

Carrier Planning & Guidance

Preparing for College - The Real World???

Carrier Planning & Guidance

PULL YOUR LOAD! Gleaming in the early dawn, two coupled six thousand horsepower locomotives roared from the station. Exhilarated as the newly built engines accelerated to a cruising speed of sixty miles per hour, the engineer turned his head to check his load astonished to see the one hundred twelve-car train unmoved a mile behind him. Now what? Personal computers destined for vibrant businesses, leather chairs ordered by inside the beltway law firms, microscopes needed by crime fighting forensics labs, paintbrushes for the master's hand, all idle would never reach their destination because the engine never coupled with the load! Finish The Story...

Learn to Budget & More...

The Future Home Buyer Program is designed to help teach high school students the importance of budgeting, the use of credit and the ramifications of abuse of credit and inform them of some of the everyday legal concerns they may soon face. The goal is to promote financial responsibility and position the student for what is, most likely, the largest investment they will make in their life . . . buying a home of their own.

College is Possible

Thinking about college? You probably have a lot of questions: How does the application process work? What sort of college is right for me? How much will college cost? You've come to the right place. America's colleges and universities have prepared this site to guide you to the books, websites, and other resources that admissions and financial aid professionals consider most helpful. With planning, preparation -- and the right information -- college is possible for almost every American.

Go to College

The Embark web site offers students everything necessary to make well-informed decisions about higher education. It guides students through the college application process - including test preparation, researching schools, applying online, financial aid and alternatives - and the process of getting ready to attend.

PHEAAMentor™ is a service provided free of charge to help students and their families plan for college.

A Mentor™ system is an online resource to help students and their families select a college, apply for admission, and plan to finance higher education. PHEAAMentor™ offers total access to information and admissions applications for degree-granting colleges and universities within Pennsylvania. The student is responsible for the standard fee charged by a college or university upon submitting an application for admission, but otherwise, Mentor™ systems are provided free of charge. For More Info...

See PHEAA for financing...

Charter Schools

Description & Purpose of Charter Schools

Charter schools are nonsectarian public schools of choice that operate with freedom from many of the regulations that apply to traditional public schools. The "charter" establishing each such school is a performance contract detailing the school's mission, program, goals, students served, methods of assessment, and ways to measure success. The length of time for which charters are granted varies, but most are granted for 3-5 years. At the end of the term, the entity granting the charter may renew the school's contract. For More Info...

Colleges & Universities

Educational Websites / Games

700+ Great Sites for Kids

Great Sites: Amazing, Spectacular, Mysterious, Wonderful Web Sites for Kids and the Adults Who Care About Them. This site links you to over 700+ Great Sites for kids. This is just one of the links I found on Good Stuff for Kids page.

A Place For Kids

A Pennsylvania Department of Education site full of fun links for kids.

America Links Up

A Kids Online Teach-In is a public awareness and education campaign sponsored by a broad-based coalition of non-profits, education groups, and corporations concerned with providing children with a safe and rewarding experience online. This site contains a number of valuable resources for parents and kids.

Dangers of Alcohol

Over the past few years, the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board has taken a leadership role in the prevention of underage drinking and other forms of alcohol abuse. The Bureau of Alcohol Education works on many levels with schools, community groups, licensees, and others to prevent the problems that misuse of beverage alcohol can cause.

What is alcohol?

Alcohol is found in some drinks, such as beer, wine, wine coolers, and liquor. It can hurt the body and the mind in many ways. Alcohol is a drug, but it is different from other drugs, because it is legal for grownups 21 and over to drink. But it's against the law to drink before you're 21. Why is it against the law for kids to drink alcohol? For More Info...

Department of Transportation (Dot)

The Dept. of Transportation's interactive website for kids to learn all about the various types of transportation and safety.

Learn About Pennsylvania's State Symbols

Do you what the state bird, dog, drink, ship, flower, fossil, tree, insect, animal and fish are?

Good Stuff for Kids

There are a lot of great sites on the Internet for kids. The following are just a few of the fun and exciting sites we've found for you to surf. This is a section of America Links Up web site. Remember To Scroll Down on the Good Stuff for Kids page to see their entire list of links!!!

History of Pennsylvania PA

Learn about the Liberty Bell, Pennsylvania Canals, the Underground Railroad, William Penn, John Priestley, the Amish, and History, Physical and Natural Properties of Pennsylvania presented by the Pennsylvania Historical Museum Commission.

Kids Discover PA

Learn interesting facts about Pennsylvania in a simple format.

Learning websites by different Pennsylvania Agencies

Pennsylvania Government Agencies that have designed learning websites for kids.

Sail a Viking Ship

Navigate the waters of the North Atlantic on the same voyage Leif Ericsson took while exploring.

The challenge is to complete the journey in one sailing season while avoiding icebergs, compensating for changing wind conditions, and managing your food supply by fishing or docking in ports along the way. If you successfully complete the voyage, you will become an honorary Viking captain.

Gnarly Math

Kids or students having trouble with math? Would you like to persuade them that math is as neat as music and sports?

Math is Essential to Your Kids' Future. Get Them Started Early Learning How Fun And Easy Algebra, Geometry, and Trig Can Be!

Monty Phister, whose letter you'll read in a moment, is a retired computer engineer. For ten years he worked as a volunteer in the Santa Fe public schools, getting hundreds of kids introduced to and interested in mathematics. This Web site will let you apply his experience and ideas to get your own children or students turned on to mathematics!

United States Geological Survey (USGS)

Welcome to the Learning Web, a portion of the USGS web dedicated to K-12 education, exploration, and life-long learning. Visit often and explore things on, in, around, and about the Earth such as plants and animals, land, water, and maps. Learn how Biology, Geology, Hydrology, and Geography can help us understand our changing world.

Educating Our Children

MAKE EDUCATION A FAMILY AFFAIR!

Years after the landmark report "A Nation at Risk" alerted the American people to the importance of "parents are a child's first teacher," the vital role that families can play in the education of their children still hasn't received the attention it merits. "Strong Families, Strong Schools" is the national initiative to encourage and support efforts by families to take a more active role in their children's learning.

Three factors over which parents exercise authority:

1. Student absenteeism.
2. Variety of reading materials in the home.
3. Excessive television watching.

These 3 areas explain nearly 90 percent of the difference in eighth-grade mathematics test scores across 37 states and the District of Columbia on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Thus, controllable home factors account for almost all the differences in average student achievement across states (Barton & Coley 1992).

Although math and science performance of American students on NAEP and math scores on the SAT have shown improvement in recent years, NAEP reading scores and SAT verbal scores have remained flat. Reading is more dependent on learning activities in the home than is math or science (The College Board 1994).

Studies of individual families show that what the family does is more important to student success than family income or education. This is true whether the family is rich or poor, whether the parents finished high school or not, or whether the child is in preschool or in the upper grades (Coleman 1967; Epstein 1991; Henderson & Berla 1987; deKanter, Ginsburg & Milne 1986; Henderson & Berla 1994; Keith & Keith 1993; Liontos 1992; Walberg n.d.)

The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children (Anderson et al 1985).

International comparisons show the high academic success of students from Asian countries, which many attribute to the priority their families give to education (Stevenson 1993). Family involvement could double the public investment in student learning. If every parent of a child aged 1 through 9 spent one hour reading or working on schoolwork with his or her child five days a week, American parents would annually devote at least 8.7 billion hours to support their children's reading (US Department of Education 1994). In money terms, if the children's teachers spent the same time one-on-one, the cost to the American taxpayer would be approximately $230 billion more in 1991 -- about the same as what the American public pays yearly for the entire K-12 public American education enterprise. In practice, however, only half of parents with children under age 9 say they read to them every day (Gorman 1993).

Family involvement is one of the best long-term investments a family can make.

The difference in lifetime earning between a student who did not graduate from high school and one who did is over $200,000. The difference for a student who received a bachelor's degree or more is almost $1 million (US Census Bureau 1994)

There is public support for greater family involvement in learning:

• Forty percent of parents across the country believe that they are not devoting enough time to their children's education (Finney 1993).
• Teachers ranked strengthening parents' roles in their children's learning as the issue that should receive the highest priority in public education policy over the next few years (Louis Harris and Associates 1993).
• Among students aged 10 to 13, 72 percent said they would like to talk to their parents more about schoolwork. Forty-eight percent of older adolescents (14-17 years old) agreed (National Commission on Children 1991).
• Eighty-nine percent of company executives identified the biggest obstacle to school reform as lack of parental involvement (Perry 1993)

But if family involvement is so important, why isn't more of it happening?

Aspects of modern life stand in the way.

• Time. Both parents and teachers want to do more but are having difficulties arranging the time. For example, two-thirds of employed parents with children under the age of 18 say they do not have enough time for their children.
• Uncertainty about what to do and their own importance. May parents say they would be willing to spend more time on activities with their children if teachers gave them more guidance. Teachers also need guidance, as very few colleges and school systems provide new and experienced teachers with course work in working with families.
• Cultural barriers. Language barriers of immigrant families and communication barriers of English-speaking families who have had little education or bad school experiences limit family-school contact.
• Lack of a supportive environment. High rates of poverty and the concentrations of poverty by neighborhood limit student opportunities at home and after school. Many neighborhoods lack easy access to libraries, cultural institutions, health services and recreation.

HOW TO GET INVOLVED WITH YOUR SCHOOL

The first place to begin is by contacting your local school district. Many of the Commonwealth schools have a wealth of opportunities for family, community and business involvement. The following are excerpts from the Executive Summary of "Strong Families, Strong Schools: Building Community Partnerships for Learning." Individual copies of this document, and other documents of interest to families, are available from the US Department of Education at 1-800-USA-LEARN.

WHAT FAMILIES, SCHOOLS, COMMUNITIES, & BUSINESSES CAN DO

Families Connecting With Their Children

There are steps all families can take at home:

• Read together
• Use TV wisely.
• Establish a daily family routine.
• Schedule daily homework times.
• Monitor out-of-school activities.
• Talk with children and teenagers.
• Communicate positive values and character traits, such as respect, hard work and responsibility.
• Express high expectations and offer praise and encouragement for achievement.

Families can make a difference at their children's schools as well:

• Ensure that their middle and secondary students are offered and enrolled in challenging courses.
• Keep in touch with the school instead of waiting until a problem arises.

Ask more from schools:

• High learning standards, more family, involvement.
• Make schools safer by establishing family-school-community partnerships to make safe schools a priority to improve the learning environment in schools and neighborhoods; a precondition for learning, and the issue which parents currently rate as their number-one concern.
• Help students feel that what they are learning is relevant. Violence is more prevalent when students feel that their classes and grades are unimportant.
• Provide quality early childhood education and combine parent training with a child's preschool education to make lasting changes in that child's prospects for improved conduct, better school behavior, and lessened delinquency.

Families and schools can also team up to improve student learning:

• Expand opportunities for contact using evening and weekend hours for meetings and activities, and help coordinate transportation and child care.
• Provide teachers with a telephone in the classroom.
• Get rid of jargon to clarify communication.
• Make the school grounds and buildings more family-friendly, from having positive school signs welcoming parents to schools holding student-parent-teacher days at the beginning of each school year and throughout the year.
• Address language barriers with interpreters, translated materials, and bilingual staff.
• Reduce mistrust and cultural barriers. Parent resource centers, workshops, and home visits can help, as can a liaison or parent- teacher outreach team.
• Encourage family learning in homework assignments.
• Encourage parental input in school decisions.
• Use new technology, such as homework hotlines, voice mail, and electronic mail.

Communities Connecting Families and Schools

• Combat alcohol, drugs, and violence in and around the school and neighborhood.
• Reinforce parenting skills by providing training in parenting and early childhood education, literacy and career training, referrals for services, and other helpful programs.
• Provide mentoring programs so that youth may be assured of tutoring and guidance from responsible adults.
• Enlist community volunteers, including retired and older citizens.
• Offer after-school and summer learning and recreation programs.
• Make health, library, and cultural services easily accessible to the school's neighborhood.
• Encourage parent and school involvement in community councils and special projects.

Family-Friendly Businesses Supporting Learning:

• Promote parent involvement strategies geared to high standards in school, school districts, and state education reform efforts, including matching employee volunteer time in schools with leave time.
• Share with employees promising ideas for encouraging learning to high academic and occupational standards.
• Adopt "family-friendly" policies, such as parenting and literacy training, child care, and flexible leave policies that accommodate school visits and school volunteer activities.
• Assist schools directly, including providing encouragement for employee volunteers, funding for parent involvement projects, and support for reform legislation.

A Place for Parents

This site offers links to websites that deal with all aspects helping your children learn.

Teaching Aides for Teachers

This site offers links for teachers to use as resources in their classroom.

Gnarly Math

Kids or students having trouble with math? Would you like to persuade them that math is as neat as music and sports?

Math is Essential to Your Kids' Future. Get Them Started Early Learning How Fun And Easy Algebra, Geometry, and Trig Can Be!

Monty Phister, whose letter you'll read in a moment, is a retired computer engineer. For ten years he worked as a volunteer in the Santa Fe public schools, getting hundreds of kids introduced to and interested in mathematics. This Web site will let you apply his experience and ideas to get your own children or students turned on to mathematics!

Financial Aid

United States Dept. of Education

The Department of Education administers several major student aid programs, including Pell Grants and Stafford Loans, which provide over $42 billion a year to help millions of students pay for the costs of college. Whether you're ready to apply for financial aid or just interested in more information about the federal student aid programs, the starting point is... For A Lot Info...

Student Financial Assistance

Mapping Your Future

This site is sponsored by a group of guaranty agencies who participate in the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP) and are committed to providing information about higher education and career opportunities.

Mapping Your Future's mission is to counsel students and families about college, career, and financial aid choices through a state-of-the-art public service web site. To accomplish this mission, the Mapping Your Future professional staff and volunteers have established the following objectives for the project:

• Provide accurate and up-to-date information about student aid.
• Develop innovative student aid services to assist students and families.
• Promote technological innovation by sharing information with other participants about technologies and industry trends.
• Establish a national reputation of reliable information and quality service for the web site and for sponsoring agencies.

Find Aid for College!

Every major newspaper and personal finance magazine in the country has reviewed the site. The New York Daily News called FinAid "the hottest site on the Internet for financial aid tips." It is "the best place to begin a search" according to the Chicago Sun-Times, and "the grand-daddy of all Web sites" according to the Boston Globe. Yahoo Internet Life said to "make FinAid your first stop. This site offers some of the best 'how to' guidance on securing financial aid."

Find Money For College

Find money for college! Search 600,000 scholarships worth over $1 billion. Get expert tips on financial aid, careers and more! Find your dream school with personalized matching against over 4,000 colleges. Get more information from colleges looking for you!

Homeschooling

Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA)

The Home School Legal Defense Association is a non-profit advocacy organization established to defend and advance the constitutional right of parents to direct the education of their children and to protect family freedoms. Through annual memberships, HSLDA is tens of thousands of families united in service together, providing a strong voice when and where needed.

Homeschool World

Who Are We? The official site of Practical Homeschooling magazine and The Big Book of Home Learning. See the Home Life Catalog - your source for homeschooling and family products! Join the HS World list and sign the guest book! Also check out our NEW message forum and experts areas! Over 300,000 visits to this page yearly, and climbing!

Home School Crosswalk

HomeSchool Channel provides an online home school support group, with chat sessions, home school forums, and daily messages of encouragement.

Home Schooling Friendly Colleges & Universities

Colleges and Universities that are listed on this web site offer distance learning for Home Schooling families and recognize the quality of Home Schooling Education... Not a complete list...

Home Schooling in Pennsylvania

A comprehensive resources for those contemplating or actually Home Schooling their children in the state of Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania Homeschoolers Accreditation Agency (PHAA) http://www.phaa.org. Future site

Pennsylvania Homeschoolers Accreditation Agency (PHAA) is a statewide homeschool membership organization founded by Dr. Howard B. Richman in 1991 in order to provide legitimate diplomas to the homeschooling community.

Christian Homeschool Association of Pennsylvania (CHAP)

WELCOME The Pennsylvania legislature passed a law in 1988 making homeschooling an approved educational option for all parents. This page briefly explains the essential elements of homeschooling in Pennsylvania. In order to be well informed, we encourage you to take advantage of the many resources available from a local support group and CHAP.

PA Homeschoolers

PA Homeschoolers is a network linking homeschoolers in Pennsylvania. It organizes political action, provides for communication among homeschoolers, and organizes statewide activities including a homeschool excellence day in the Harrisburg Capitol Rotunda.

PA Homeschoolers helps many support groups in Pennsylvania work together. PA Homeschoolers is a publisher publishing the books and guides written by Susan and Howard Richman. Our books include The Three R's at Home, Writing from Home, Story of a Bill, and Math by Kids!. Our guides include Guide to PA Homeschool Law and Guide to PA Homeschoolers Diploma.

State of Pennsylvania Home School Site

In 1988, the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed Act 169. This law amended the Pennsylvania School Code to allow parents or guardians to homeschool their children as an option to compulsory school attendance. This law specifies the requirements and responsibilities of the parents and the school district where the family lives.

Requirements for Home Schooling

Hello.... ......and welcome to Snow Hollow Home School. Our cozy home is nestled in the Endless Mountains Region of Pennsylvania. We've just finished our eleventh year of homeschooling. Homeschooling is not what we do, it's how we live... Visit our personal Home School Site....

Libraries

Library of Congress

The Library of Congress Online Catalog contains over 12 million bibliographic records representing books, serials, computer files, manuscripts, cartographic materials, music, sound recordings, and visual materials from the Library's collections. Those using text-only browsers can view these records through an alternative interface for the online catalog described below. Search the Library of Congress...

Math is Essential to Your Kids' Future. Get Them Started Early Learning How Fun And Easy Algebra, Geometry, and Trig Can Be!

Monty Phister, whose letter you'll read in a moment, is a retired computer engineer. For ten years he worked as a volunteer in the Santa Fe public schools, getting hundreds of kids introduced to and interested in mathematics. This Web site will let you apply his experience and ideas to get your own children or students turned on to mathematics!

United States Geological Survey (USGS)

Welcome to the Learning Web, a portion of the USGS web dedicated to K-12 education, exploration, and life-long learning. Visit often and explore things on, in, around, and about the Earth such as plants and animals, land, water, and maps. Learn how Biology, Geology, Hydrology, and Geography can help us understand our changing world.

Educating Our Children

MAKE EDUCATION A FAMILY AFFAIR!

Years after the landmark report "A Nation at Risk" alerted the American people to the importance of "parents are a child's first teacher," the vital role that families can play in the education of their children still hasn't received the attention it merits. "Strong Families, Strong Schools" is the national initiative to encourage and support efforts by families to take a more active role in their children's learning.

Three factors over which parents exercise authority:

1. Student absenteeism.
2. Variety of reading materials in the home.
3. Excessive television watching.

These 3 areas explain nearly 90 percent of the difference in eighth-grade mathematics test scores across 37 states and the District of Columbia on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Thus, controllable home factors account for almost all the differences in average student achievement across states (Barton & Coley 1992).

Although math and science performance of American students on NAEP and math scores on the SAT have shown improvement in recent years, NAEP reading scores and SAT verbal scores have remained flat. Reading is more dependent on learning activities in the home than is math or science (The College Board 1994).

Studies of individual families show that what the family does is more important to student success than family income or education. This is true whether the family is rich or poor, whether the parents finished high school or not, or whether the child is in preschool or in the upper grades (Coleman 1967; Epstein 1991; Henderson & Berla 1987; deKanter, Ginsburg & Milne 1986; Henderson & Berla 1994; Keith & Keith 1993; Liontos 1992; Walberg n.d.)

The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children (Anderson et al 1985).

International comparisons show the high academic success of students from Asian countries, which many attribute to the priority their families give to education (Stevenson 1993). Family involvement could double the public investment in student learning. If every parent of a child aged 1 through 9 spent one hour reading or working on schoolwork with his or her child five days a week, American parents would annually devote at least 8.7 billion hours to support their children's reading (US Department of Education 1994). In money terms, if the children's teachers spent the same time one-on-one, the cost to the American taxpayer would be approximately $230 billion more in 1991 -- about the same as what the American public pays yearly for the entire K-12 public American education enterprise. In practice, however, only half of parents with children under age 9 say they read to them every day (Gorman 1993).

Family involvement is one of the best long-term investments a family can make.

The difference in lifetime earning between a student who did not graduate from high school and one who did is over $200,000. The difference for a student who received a bachelor's degree or more is almost $1 million (US Census Bureau 1994)

There is public support for greater family involvement in learning:

• Forty percent of parents across the country believe that they are not devoting enough time to their children's education (Finney 1993).
• Teachers ranked strengthening parents' roles in their children's learning as the issue that should receive the highest priority in public education policy over the next few years (Louis Harris and Associates 1993).
• Among students aged 10 to 13, 72 percent said they would like to talk to their parents more about schoolwork. Forty-eight percent of older adolescents (14-17 years old) agreed (National Commission on Children 1991).
• Eighty-nine percent of company executives identified the biggest obstacle to school reform as lack of parental involvement (Perry 1993)

But if family involvement is so important, why isn't more of it happening?

Aspects of modern life stand in the way.

• Time. Both parents and teachers want to do more but are having difficulties arranging the time. For example, two-thirds of employed parents with children under the age of 18 say they do not have enough time for their children.
• Uncertainty about what to do and their own importance. May parents say they would be willing to spend more time on activities with their children if teachers gave them more guidance. Teachers also need guidance, as very few colleges and school systems provide new and experienced teachers with course work in working with families.
• Cultural barriers. Language barriers of immigrant families and communication barriers of English-speaking families who have had little education or bad school experiences limit family-school contact.
• Lack of a supportive environment. High rates of poverty and the concentrations of poverty by neighborhood limit student opportunities at home and after school. Many neighborhoods lack easy access to libraries, cultural institutions, health services and recreation.

HOW TO GET INVOLVED WITH YOUR SCHOOL

The first place to begin is by contacting your local school district. Many of the Commonwealth schools have a wealth of opportunities for family, community and business involvement. The following are excerpts from the Executive Summary of "Strong Families, Strong Schools: Building Community Partnerships for Learning." Individual copies of this document, and other documents of interest to families, are available from the US Department of Education at 1-800-USA-LEARN.

WHAT FAMILIES, SCHOOLS, COMMUNITIES, & BUSINESSES CAN DO

Families Connecting With Their Children

There are steps all families can take at home:

• Read together
• Use TV wisely.
• Establish a daily family routine.
• Schedule daily homework times.
• Monitor out-of-school activities.
• Talk with children and teenagers.
• Communicate positive values and character traits, such as respect, hard work and responsibility.
• Express high expectations and offer praise and