Best Selling Books by Jerry West

A trip to Circus Island in Florida in search of a houseboat to purchase puts the Happy Hollisters on the trail of circus dog thieves. As the young sleuths uncover sinister goings-on behind the scenes at the circus, they also learn exciting circus tricks like tumbling and tight-rope walking.

Is Pine Lake a haven for creatures from outer space? The citizens of Shoreham are rattled by mysterious UFO sightings, but the Shoreham Detective Club is on the case. From unusual footprints in the mud to a stolen doll at school, the clues start piling up fast as The Happy Hollisters search for who-or what-is causing the panic around town.

The One I Left Behind A heart-stirring tale of love, memory, and the winding path home. Ten years ago, Claire Walker left her hometown in the dead of night-pregnant, heartbroken, and shrouded in silence. She had her reasons, though she buried them deep: a love that couldn't survive the weight of secrets, a town that watched her father fall from grace, and a best friend who disappeared without warning. She never planned to return. But when her mother's health begins to fail, Claire comes back with her teenage daughter, Lily, in tow-carrying with her the life she built, the lies she told, and the questions that never stopped whispering at the edge of her mind. What she doesn't expect is Jake. Jake Carter never forgot Claire. Not when she left, not through the firehouse shifts or the nights fixing old cars just to fill the silence. What he didn't know-what no one told him-was that he had a daughter. Now, with Claire back in town and Lily calling him Dad, the past crashes into the present with quiet force, demanding answers, and something more dangerous: forgiveness. As the town that once turned its back on her begins to soften, Claire must confront the truths she's avoided for nearly two decades-about Tess, the friend who left first; about the night everything changed; and about the possibility of starting over with the man who never stopped loving her. The One I Left Behind is a deeply moving novel about the families we're born into and the ones we create, the small-town scars we carry, and the courage it takes to reclaim what once seemed lost. Perfect for fans of Kristin Hannah, Ann Napolitano, and Taylor Jenkins Reid, this book is a lyrical, emotionally resonant journey into healing, motherhood, and the power of quiet redemption.

Most children enter kindergarten when they are 5 years of age and move into first grade when they are 6. This time period is marked by great developmental change (Sameroff and Haith 1996), and children differ in what they can and cannot do socially, physically, and cognitively. Therefore, parents and educators are concerned whether certain children will have the knowledge and skills at age 5 to succeed in kindergarten. Over the years, policies and practices have emerged that are intended to improve children's early school experiences by giving them more time to develop and mature (e.g., changing age of entry requirements, transitional grades, readiness testing). Two such kindergarten enrollment strategies are retaining children for a second year of kindergarten and delaying the start of their first year of kindergarten. This report uses data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K) to examine the relationship between kindergarten enrollment status (e.g., repeating kindergarten or delaying entry into kindergarten) and children's spring first grade reading and mathematics achievement. (Contains 16 endnotes, 1 figure, and 6 tables.).

This report provides a portrait of children entering Head Start for the first time in fall 2009, as well as of their family backgrounds and the classrooms and programs that serve them. The report also offers comparisons across the past decade of the Head Start program to delineate trends and changes in the population served and the services provided. Data are drawn from the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES), which was first launched in 1997 as a periodic, longitudinal study of program performance. Successive nationally representative samples of Head Start children, their families, classrooms, and programs provide descriptive information on the population served; staff qualifications, credentials, and opinions; Head Start classroom practices and quality measures; and child and family outcomes. FACES includes a battery of child assessments across many developmental domains; interviews with children's parents, teachers, and program managers; and observations of classroom quality. In 2008, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) funded Mathematica Policy Research and its partners--Educational Testing Service and Juarez and Associates--to design and conduct FACES 2009. (Contains 18 figures, 4 tables, and 61 notes.).

The Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) was first launched in 1997 as a periodic longitudinal study of program performance. Successive nationally representative samples of Head Start children, their families, classrooms, and programs provide descriptive information on the population served; staff qualifications, credentials, beliefs and opinions; classroom practices and quality measures; and child and family outcomes. FACES includes a battery of direct child assessments across multiple domains. It also comprises interviews with the child's parents, teachers and program managers, as well as direct observations of classroom quality. This set of tables is designed to accompany a research brief which profiles the 3- and 4-year-old Head Start children and families who were newly enrolled in the program in fall 2006 and are still attending in spring 2007 (see Aikens et al. 2010). Following an introduction to the study methodology and sample, the tables in the first section provide information on the children's characteristics, family demographics, and home life, including language background, educational environment of the home, family routines, and socioeconomic risk status in spring 2007. These tables also include information on parent involvement in Head Start and level of satisfaction with their own and their children's Head Start experiences. The next sections, on cognitive and social-emotional/health outcomes in spring 2007, chronicle children's developmental progress over the Head Start year. They examine whether these outcomes vary by age, gender, race/ethnicity, or risk status. The following section presents the characteristics of their teachers and classrooms, including measures of observed quality in spring 2007. Subsequent sections provide information on fall-spring change in family environment, child cognitive, social-emotional, and health outcomes. The next section examines the relationships among child, family, and classroom factors and children's outcomes; the methods used for those analyses appear in advance of the tables in that section. The final section provides tables of standard deviations and standard errors. (Contains 183 tables and 12 footnotes.) [For related report, "A Year in Head Start: Children, Families and Programs. ACF-ORPRE Report", see ED517213.].

This methodology report provides technical information about the development, design, and conduct of the third grade data collection of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-99 (ECLS-K). Detailed information on the development of the instruments, sample design, data collection methods, data preparation and editing, response rates, and weighting and variance estimation is included. This report is organized into the following chapters: (1) Introduction; (2) Development of Survey Instruments; (3) Sample Design and Implementation; (4) Data Collection Methods; (5) Data Preparation and Editing; (6) Response Rates; and (7) Weighting and Variance Estimation. Individual chapters contain references. (Contains 65 tables and 29 exhibits.).

This report contains resources to help researchers and policymakers review measures used in NCEE evaluations of educational interventions. The measures included in the Compendium are applicable to settings for preschool through grade 12. The Compendium discusses criteria and their importance in selecting measures for assessing intervention impacts on student, teacher, and classroom outcomes, and presents profiles or table summaries of these measures. In expectation that the information in this document will be used under diverse circumstances for varied purposes, background information is presented in report format. The materials will be most useful when used in consultation with an assessment expert. (Contains 7 tables, 1 figure, 1 exhibit and 5 footnotes.) [For Volume 2, see ED511792.].