The purpose of this study was to describe the coaching that occurred at Head Start (HS) grantees as a result of the Early Learning Mentor Coach (ELMC) initiative. This provided a unique opportunity to describe the different dimensions of coaching within HS settings from the perspective of multiple stakeholders--administrators, coaches, and staff.…

The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) collects institution-level data from postsecondary institutions in the United States (50 states and the District of Columbia) and other jurisdictions, such as Puerto Rico. This report presents information from the Winter 2007-2008 IPEDS web-based data collection. A postsecondary…

In many arenas, the demand for data has outstripped the availability of good data and has increased the tendency to grab for whatever numbers are being circulated in the literature. As a result, when someone says: "This is the best data available," it is essential to remember that "best" does not always mean good. This caution is particularly…

This report provides guidance and documentation for users of the public release for the combined base-year and first follow-up data of the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002). It provides extensive documentation of the content of the data files and how to access and manipulate them. Chapter 1 serves as an introduction to ELS:2002. It…

Provides an overview of adoption statistics and describes data available regarding adoption arrangements and the characteristics of parents who relinquish children, of children who are adopted or in substitute care, and of adults who seek to adopt. Recommends the establishment of a national data collection system for adoption statistics.…

This paper acknowledges that research on school dropouts presents problems in the definitions and computation of dropout indices. It considers a variety of methods for computing dropout rates, using dropout rates which are real and which were available at the end of the 1986-1987 school year. Fall enrollment, average daily membership, and total…

This paper presents results of a review of mail survey response literature and provides recommendations for the application of some response-enhancing techniques to the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) of the National Center for Education Statistics. The SASS is an integrated set of surveys sponsored by the NCES and conducted by the Bureau of…

This report provides the most recent and complete statistics available on student aid in the 1980s. It revises figures presented earlier for the 1980s and, for the first time, gives estimates for academic year 1989-90. The data series upon which the report is based is intended to provide comparable statistics over time for the major providers of…

The 'rural' definitions applied by the Federal Government, especially by two data-gathering agencies, the Bureau of the Census and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), emphasize different dimensions of the concept, and delineate the rural-urban continuum in different ways. This report discusses the inconsistency of curent "rural"…