Project BudBurst is a national program intended to get students and other "citizen scientists" to participate in a real study about plants, the environment, and climate change. It also provides an excellent opportunity for students to build data-analysis skills. A collaboration of several agencies and universities, the program began last year and…

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the analysis of data collected by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). In simplest terms, the analysis can be characterized as establishing baseline estimates of the percentages of young Americans possessing certain skills, knowledge, understandings, and attitudes and…

This paper discusses the procedures best suited for storing, organizing, and using past and present National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data, as well as procedures and systems used for archiving past and future data, and the quality-control procedures employed to ensure the integrity and responsiveness of the data management system.…

The methodology used during the 2-year project involving 14 case studies of rural education improvement programs consisted of 4 sets of overlapping activities: (1) gearing up and completing the study design; (2) site visits, data collection, and case study write ups; (3) data analysis; and (4) technical assistance. The gearing up period was…

Development of a basic information system for vocational education through Project EDNEED (Empirical Determination of Nationally Essential Educational Data) is summarized in this first volume of a five-volume final report. Objectives of the project were to (1) determine the extent to which selected data questions represent the vocational education…

This three-volume report provides a comprehensive picture of the vocational education and training (VET) system in Australia, its key policies, initiatives undertaken, and achievements during 1999. This publication contains volume 3, which presents a detailed statistical report against the key performance measures for the VET system. Volumes 1 and…

In 1999 Ministers responsible for school education agreed to the new set of "National Goals for Schooling in the Twenty-First Century," with the aim of providing high quality schooling in Australia which would secure for students the necessary knowledge, understanding, skills and values for a productive and rewarding life. As a…