This videotape introduces resources provided by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to help educators make good educational policy decisions. The NCES is charged with collecting, maintaining, and reporting statistics about U.S. education, and it makes a variety of resources available to educators and the public to help them use…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has been collecting data on student achievement since 1969. It currently maintains three different assessments: long-term trends, cross-sectional national, and cross-sectional state-by-state data. Although the data are available to researchers outside the Federal Government, limited use has…

GENESYS is a GENeric Evaluation SYStem for data collection and evaluation through computer technology. GENESYS gathers and reports the standard information (student characteristics, achievement, attendance, discipline, grades/credits, dropouts, and retainees) for specific groups of students. In the Austin (Texas) Independent School District's…

To establish a comprehensive national database on postsecondary student financial aid, the National Center for Education Statistics conducted the 1987 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS). Objectives were to: (1) determine the costs of postsecondary education for aided and non-aided students; (2) evaluate how students finance their…

The use of management information systems (MIS) in the department fiscal system is described in this paper, with a focus on development of a planning model prior to MIS implementation. Planning stages involve a task force to evaluate the situation prior to implementation. Applicability of simple and advanced management information systems are…

A project was undertaken to (1) develop plans for a fourth follow-up survey of Project Talent participants approximately seventeen years after their expected graduation from high school, and (2) facilitate user access to the data base. (Initiated in 1957, Project Talent is a longitudinal study regarding the educational, career, and personal…

The status of the high school class of 1972, as it was two years after graduation in October 1974, is described in terms of questionnaire survey responses. Students from 1,153 high schools participated and 20,872 students responded to the questionnaire out of the total group of 23,451. The development, administration, and reliability of the survey…

This document represents a comprehensive annotated reference to many sources of data on four racial and ethnic minority groups, namely: blacks, persons of Spanish ancestry, minority races other than Negro (American Indians, Japanese, Chinese, Filipinos, Hawaiians, Eskimos, and Aleuts), and ethnic groups other than persons of Spanish ancestry. The…

The School District Data Book (SDDB) of the National Center for Education Statistics contains data on local education agencies that make it possible to compare data aggregated at district, county, state, and national levels on hundreds of variables. The development of the SDDB has provided an efficient and powerful tool for use in planning and…

The 1998 High School Transcript Study (HSTS) provides the U.S. Department of Education and other policymakers about current course offerings and students' course taking patterns. In 1998 the nationally representative sample for the HSTS included 25,422 students graduating in 1994 from 264 high schools. Approximately 94% of the sampled students…

Provides examples of schools and districts nationwide that use data-based decision making effectively to enhance beginning teacher induction, multi-age reading classes, literacy education, tracking of student achievement, ongoing staff development, and school discipline efforts. The programs share a commitment to putting data at the center of…

This documentation is intended to assist users of the school file which was prepared from information collected for the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972 (NLS-72). The school file is a companion to the NLS-72 student-based data file and consists of 1,318 records, one from each high school from which NLS-72 students are…

This report of a consensus conference on pediatric rheumatology deals with the complex nature of rheumatological conditions of children, which require diagnostic, therapeutic, and follow-up services for comprehensive care and demand the cooperation of medical, health, education, mental health, and social service professionals. Conference…

This document is the users' guide for Version 3.1 of the Public-Use data tapes compiled by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 1983-84. The Public-Use tapes are produced to allow outside researchers access to the NAEP data. The tapes accompanying this guide contain data assessing student achievement in reading and writing at…

This monograph presents the proceedings of two symposia on assistive technology for people with disabilities in Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, the Federated States of Micronesia, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Republic of the Marshall Islands, and Palau. Following an overview, Sections 1 and 2 contain the presentations and…