Virtual schools are a result of widespread changes in knowledge about learning, in available technology and in society. Virtual schooling is growing in popularity and will continue to attract students because of the benefits it offers over traditional schooling. Stakeholders in virtual schools need information to guide their decisions. For the foreseeable future, virtual schools will continue to meet diverse student needs, and to evolve in response to further change. Development and Management of Virtual Schools: Issues and Trends brings together knowledge of virtual schools as a reference for scholars and other groups involved in virtual schools. The chapters review best practice from concept and development, through implementation and evaluation.

This unique volume is a case study of a successful and innovative program using case aide volunteers to deinstitutionalize mental patients. It will serve as an important reference for professionals, teachers, and administrators who are involved in the "business" of human services and require concrete information on how to develop effective volunteer programs to bridge the widening gap between services and needs. The authors use their particular program as an empirical blueprint for principles undergirding the successful use of volunteers as extensions of professional social service staff. The case-aide handbook appended to the volume provides a "quick prescription" formula for how this volunteer program was made viable and how these techniques can be adapted to other programs. In the new and enlarged edition of The New Volunteerism, the authors tell about "whatever happened to..." the case aides in their program, based on the responses to a questionnaire they designed and mailed to 100 of these men and women. Models for Volunteer/Professional Partnerships are defined and illustrated with creative and innovative volunteer programs reviewed by Feinstein and Cavanaugh. These programs serve many different populations, including: alcoholics, the elderly, the mentally ill, the retarded, abusive parents, and the terminally ill.

Viewed from afar, North Korea may appear bizarre, or positively irrational. But as Nicholas Eberstadt demonstrates in this meticulously researched volume, there is a grim coherence to North Korea's political economy, and a ruthless logic undergirding it--one that unreservedly subordinates economic welfare to augmentation of political power. Thus, paradoxically, even as official policies and practices consign the DPRK economy to a perilous realm between crisis and catastrophe, the country's leadership maintains unchallenged domestic control and has actually managed to increase its international influence.Through painstaking collection of hard-to-uncover data and careful analysis, Eberstadt provides a quantitative tableau of North Korea's terrible failure in its economic race against South Korea; its stubborn adherence to policies all but guaranteed to stifle growth and undermine economic performance; and the longstanding official effort to ignore, or mitigate, pressures for economic reform.Eberstadt is skeptical of optimistic accounts from South Korea and elsewhere suggesting that the North Korean leadership is interested in resolving the current nuclear impasse, and getting on with the business of reform and development. So long as Pyongyang's rulers entertain the ambition of reunifying the Korean peninsula on its own terms, Eberstadt argues, economic reforms worthy of the name will be subversive of state authority--and vigilantly resisted by Pyongyang's rulers. This authoritative volume has received widespread attention from Asian specialists, well as those concerned with nuclear proliferation and world peace, and international relations professionals in general.

This unique volume is a case study of a successful and innovative program using case aide volunteers to deinstitutionalize mental patients. It will serve as an important reference for professionals, teachers, and administrators who are involved in the "business" of human services and require concrete information on how to develop effective volunteer programs to bridge the widening gap between services and needs. The authors use their particular program as an empirical blueprint for principles undergirding the successful use of volunteers as extensions of professional social service staff. The case-aide handbook appended to the volume provides a "quick prescription" formula for how this volunteer program was made viable and how these techniques can be adapted to other programs. In the new and enlarged edition of The New Volunteerism, the authors tell about "whatever happened to..." the case aides in their program, based on the responses to a questionnaire they designed and mailed to 100 of these men and women. Models for Volunteer/Professional Partnerships are defined and illustrated with creative and innovative volunteer programs reviewed by Feinstein and Cavanaugh. These programs serve many different populations, including: alcoholics, the elderly, the mentally ill, the retarded, abusive parents, and the terminally ill.

Viewed from afar, North Korea may appear bizarre, or positively irrational. But as Nicholas Eberstadt demonstrates in this meticulously researched volume, there is a grim coherence to North Korea's political economy, and a ruthless logic undergirding it--one that unreservedly subordinates economic welfare to augmentation of political power. Thus, paradoxically, even as official policies and practices consign the DPRK economy to a perilous realm between crisis and catastrophe, the country's leadership maintains unchallenged domestic control and has actually managed to increase its international infl uence.

Through painstaking collection of hard-to-uncover data and careful analysis, Eberstadt provides a quantitative tableau of North Korea's terrible failure in its economic race against South Korea; its stubborn adherence to policies all but guaranteed to stifle growth and undermine economic performance; and the longstanding official effort to ignore, or mitigate, pressures for economic reform.

Eberstadt is skeptical of optimistic accounts from South Korea and elsewhere suggesting that the North Korean leadership is interested in resolving the current nuclear impasse, and getting on with the business of reform and development. So long as Pyongyang's rulers entertain the ambition of reunifying the Korean peninsula on its own terms, Eberstadt argues, economic reforms worthy of the name will be subversive of state authority--and vigilantly resisted by Pyongyang's rulers. This authoritative volume has received widespread attention from Asian specialists, well as those concerned with nuclear proliferation and world peace, and international relations professionals in general.