Discusses the use and advantages of integrated learning systems (ILSs) in elementary and middle grades, and reanalyzes 30 evaluations of ILSs by using effect size statistics. Research problems are described, including poor evaluation designs and inadequate data collection and analysis; and a table summarizes the ILS research reports and…

Identifies important criteria for assessing the quality of educational research and applies these 20 identified criteria to 2 recent international comparative studies in education, the Second International Science Study and the first International Assessment of Educational Progress. The major types of criteria are utility, propriety, and accuracy.…

The Coalition of Essential Schools is involved in a 3-year study to translate collaborative inquiry into a research process to simultaneously build schools' capacities for change. A current collaborative project is described, with a dialog between a principal, a teacher, and a researcher who are engaged in a process of school improvement. Members…

In September 1991, the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) announced standards for basic, proficient, and advanced achievement in mathematics and reported that few American students had reached these standards. Expert reviewers noted technical problems with the NAGB approach and questioned its results. In this report, the NAGB…

Over the past 25 years, five large-scale research studies of community college students have been conducted in North Carolina, involving cooperation between Duke University, North Carolina State University, and the North Carolina Department of Community Colleges. The different research strategies employed in these studies can be seen as taking one…

A number of issues involved in the large-scale assessment of science and mathematics education were illustrated during the conduct of two national surveys: the 1977 National Survey of Science, Mathematics, and Social Studies Education and the 1985 National Survey, Science and Mathematics Education. Development of the survey questionnaires started…

This report presents the preliminary findings of the District/Secondary School Study. The study had two purposes: (1) to identify ways of managing urban high schools to produce excellence, and (2) to recommend policy-relevant guidance to existing school and district administrators. The study design focused on the testing of two specific theories…

This pamphlet includes several program transcripts on educational research from the National Public Radio series, Options in Education. Dr. Harold Hodgkinson, former Director of the National Institute of Education, and Noel Epstein, Education Editor of the Washington Post, discuss "The Quality of Media Reporting on Education" and whether…

The major objectives in the establishment of a clinic in a department of psychology are to provide a setting for clinical training and for clinical research. Five issues must be considered in order to evaluate a departmental clinic effectively. First, there should be prior specification of objectives and periodic restatement of goals that include…

Evaluations of social programs based upon quasi-experimental designs are typically plagued by problems of nonequivalence between the experimental and comparison group prior to the experiment. In such settings it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to isolate the effects of the program from the confounding effects associated with the…

This study of the federal government's evaluation of social programs indicates that it is virtually impossible to establish a bias-free, valid, and reliable system of inquiry to determine the effects of social programs. Divided into five chapters, the document examines the aspirations and limitations of evaluations, methodology, evaluation in the…

The selections in this collection pertain to the predicaments faced by the biographer who must discover what he believes is the truth and then use this material to create a work of compelling interest. Arnold L. Fein, J. H. Plumb, and Hesketh Pearson present observations on the biographer's dilemma: the difficulty of determining the borderline…

Teacher and administrator feedback about a study on computer-assisted instruction (CAI) is described in this report. The hypotheses, methodology, and conclusions of the overall program are briefly discussed as they pertain to the feedback aspect. (The CAI program dealt with the effects of choice situations upon the students' engagement in…

Federal assistance for special educational programs makes necessary the regular study of evaluations of thousands of innovations in compensatory education, bilingual education, and reading programs. The results are reported to the President and to Congress. However, investigating organizations find only a few programs with adequate evidence and…

This paper details the origins of the media comparison study methodology, its current use as an evaluation instrument in distance education, and recommendations for more stringent discrimination between research and evaluation in the field of distance learning. The following topics are discussed: (1) the history of research in instructional…