This guide is designed for use by school, district, and state education agency staff to improve the effectiveness of efforts to collect and use discipline data, including reporting accurate and timely data to the federal government. It explains the importance of collecting discipline data, identifies key considerations for agencies implementing…

"School Law and the Public Schools: A Practical Guide for Educational Leaders" provides comprehensive, practical information on relevant topics that impact the organization and administration of public schools. Students learn how to apply specific legal knowledge to real issues of daily life in the classroom and school through…

The "Forum Guide to Metadata" presents and examines the ways in which metadata can be used by education agencies to improve data quality and promote a better understanding of education data. Supported by metadata-related case studies from state and local education agencies, the guide highlights the uses of metadata from a technical point…

The work of the National Forum on Education Statistics (Forum) is a key aspect of the National Cooperative Education Statistics System (Cooperative System). The Cooperative System was established to produce and maintain, with the cooperation of the states, comparable and uniform education information and data that are useful for policymaking at…

According to federal data, African American students are more than three times as likely as their white peers to be suspended or expelled. As a school leader, what do you do when your heart is in the right place, but your data show otherwise? In "Solving Disproportionality and Achieving Equity", Edward Fergus takes us on a journey into…

The National Forum on Education Statistics convened the Data Disaggregation of Racial/Ethnic Subgroups Working Group to identify best practices for disaggregating data on racial/ethnic subgroups. This guide is intended to identify some of the overarching benefits and challenges involved in data disaggregation; recommend appropriate practices for…

This brief provides tips for forming a team of staff and consultants with the needed expertise to make key measurement decisions that will ensure high-quality data for answering the study's research questions. The brief outlines the main responsibilities of measurement team members. It also describes typical measurement tasks and discusses…

Social return on investment (SROI) analysis offers a practical new approach for measuring and communicating the value of outcomes achieved by programs that provide social, health, and educational services to children and their families. This guide highlights the key steps in conducting SROI research, issues in data-gathering and analysis, as well…

This document is the fourth and final installment of this Forum series of guides on longitudinal data systems (LDS). One goal of the National Forum on Education Statistics (the Forum) is to improve the quality of education data gathered for use by policymakers and program decisionmakers. An approach to furthering this goal has been to pool the…

Written in a refreshing conversational style, this text thoroughly prepares students, program administrators, and new evaluators to conduct evaluations or to use them in their work. The book's question-driven focus and clear discussions about the importance of fostering evaluation use by building collaborative relationships with stakeholders set…

Home visiting is one tool used to prevent child abuse and improve child well-being by providing education and services in families' homes through parent education and connection to community resources. This toolkit provides state policymakers and advocates with strategies for extending and expanding access to state- or federally-funded home…

If you are looking for an organic approach to purpose-driven professional learning, this is the book for you. Award-winning educator Lois Brown Easton's latest work provides a compelling case study in narrative form, a chronological PLC planning outline, and first-hand "lessons learned" about how PLCs develop, mature, and sustain themselves. You…

Studying or finding out about children is exceptionally difficult--intellectually, physically, and emotionally. Physical, social, cognitive, and political distances between adult and the child make their relationship very different from the relationships among adults. This book explains the art and science of doing qualitative research involving…

This paper defines the student case study approach to evaluation, discusses its strengths and weaknesses as a component in a program evaluation design, and lists the specific steps needed to accomplish it. Its use in the evaluation of Experience-Based Career Education is described. (SJL)

One goal of the National Forum on Education Statistics is to improve the quality of education data gathered for use by policymakers and program decision-makers. One approach to furthering this goal has been to pool the collective experiences of Forum members to produce "best practice" guides in areas of high interest to those who…