Another aspect of eliminating the effects of discrimination is leadership by school principals and teachers to promote a climate of equality within desegregated schools. Several OE-sponsored evaluations have documented the importance of both non discriminatory practices (e.g., teachers not pointedly ignoring or criticizing minority students) and affirmative human relations programs (e.g., the use of multi racial curriculum materials and school displays). Such actions have both a moral and a legal basis, as well as a consistent ESAA evaluation history of improving the quality of race relations or academic achievement within desegregated schools. ESAA does fund some human relations programs and there is evidence that ESAA funds serve as an incentive for school districts to come into compliance with special ESAA non discrimination requirements.

A recent evaluation found that community organizations can perform such activities as developing community support for a desegregation plan or improving school-community relations more effectively than school districts. Groups funded under the ESAA Nonprofit Organizations program tend to be less effective than other organizations in the same communities. In part, this is due to the tendency of ESAA Nonprofit Organizations to undertake "safer" remedial and tutorial programs, even in districts in the initial stages of desegregation. Fortunately, the problems are subject to Federal intervention and do not represent

fundamental weaknesses of community organizations themselves.

A related program is Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which is primarily a program of technical assistance and training services provided by universities and State education agencies to school districts.

Recent changes in the Title IV program based on

an OE-sponsored evaluation study direct Title IV-funded Desegregation Assistance Centers to give first priority to providing assistance in preparing and adopting race desegregation plans. Several other changes are also designed to increase the identity of Title IV as a desegregation assistance program.

In the area of sex discrimination, a follow-up study was conducted of the Title IV program after sex discrimination technical-assistance services were added to the program. There was concern that one type of service (either race desegregation or sex discrimination) might overwhelm the other. The follow-up study suggests that these concerns

are unfounded.

A study is now in progress to assess the extent of sex stereotyping and sex discrimination in vocational education programs and to report the progress that has been made in reducing such inequities. Designed to meet the mandated requirements of Section 523(a) of the Education Amendments of 1976, the study will also report on progress in reducing sex inequities in the occupations for which vocational students train. The study will focus on how State administrators are fulfilling the various requirements for eliminating sex inequities mandated in the 1976 Amendments and will report current policies and practices within a sample of schools.

Improving the Quality of Educational Practices

Several programs administered by USOE have, as one of their purposes, the improvement of the quality of educational practices. Those discussed in this section are selected because improving practices is the primary purpose of these programs.

The programs in this category are:

All of these programs support demonstration projects. Because of limited evaluation funds, however, only Community Education, Right-to-Read, and Teacher Corps, have been evaluated.

A

Community Education. The purpose of the Community Education program is to demonstrate effective practices in community education and to stimulate wide adoption of these practices. recent study of this program indicates that it has been quite effective in achieving its purposes. Specifically:

substantial levels of effort, essentially in
keeping with the terms of the federal grants
and federal policy, had been expended;

these levels of program effort and activity were
achieved, in part, because there were substantial
commitments of non-federal resources, supplemen-
ting the federal funds;

the majority of the projects which had received
federal funds for only one year were continuing
at least some of these activities, and in
several the level of effort, even without
federal funds, had increased; and

these project-supported activities had produced
desired effects on the educational and broader
community systems with which they were

concerned, and also produced identifiable changes
in individuals which were appreciated by these
project participants.

The primary negative finding was that recordkeeping at the project level was inadequate. That is, it is clear that programmatically meaningful data do not now exist, nor can they be gathered without a substantial level of effort.

Teacher Training. Currently, Teacher Corps is implementing a new program thrust. It is intended that Teacher Corps field projects consist of a consortium of an institute of higher education (IHE), an LEA, and a community advisory group. The goal of these projects is to provide inservice training to teachers responsive to both LEA and community needs with a hoped-for side benefit of reform of IHE teaching practices. Additionaly, the training is intended to instill a greater sensitivity to the needs of minority and/or disadvantaged children so that the teacher can work more effectively with these children. Teacher Corps intends to demonstrate several

models directed toward these objectives.

A study of Teacher Corps graduates of preservice training projects showed Teacher Corps to be partially successful in achieving similar objectives. The study shows that Teacher Corps graduates were superior to control group teachers on many of the teacher performance variables desired by Teacher Corps. The Teacher Corps graduates were most different from control group teachers in terms of (a) developing ethnically relevant

curricula, (b) using community resources in teaching and initiating contact with parents, and (c) having positive attitudes about reading development and causes of poverty in the society. These variables reflect a special concern about low-income minority group children on the part of Teacher Corps. However, there were no differences in such areas as being a change agent in the school or the interaction between teacher and pupils in the classroom, as assessed by the teacher performance measures used in the study. Further, there were no significant differences between Teacher Corps and control group classes on any reading measure, despite a greater emphasis on reading instruction and academic subject matter on the part of control group teachers in grades 2-3. Teacher Corps graduates, however, were able to bring about changes in a child's self-concept that were significantly greater than changes brought about by control group teachers. These changes consisted of observed expressions of greater happiness and greater self-worth in the classroom, and better scores on important subscales of the Piers-Harris self-concept scale.

Right-to-Read.

This program has developed several

strategies for demonstrating improved practices. One strategy that has some unique characteristics is the State Leadership Program which was recently evaluated. The rationale for supporting the State Component of the Right-to-Read Program has always been one of providing money which would assist State educational agencies (SEA's) in disseminating the Right-to-Read strategy among the local education agencies (LEA's) within their