Describes a national study to determine the relationship between seven service components and student success and retention in developmental education programs. Reports that centralized program organization, mandatory assessment and placement, tutoring with tutor training, and systematic program evaluation were most closely related to student…

The study of 35 posttreatment stutterers found that magnitude estimation and interval scaling were both valid procedures for measuring speech naturalness. Speech of nonstutterers was judged more natural than speech of treated stutterers. The acoustic parameters most highly correlated with speech naturalness were voice onset time measure and…

This article examines strategies to foster and evaluate research and scholarship in Hong Kong's higher education sector. It addresses the definition of performance indicators, the role of governmental policy initiatives, performance indicators in the academic research context, possible research indicators, application of indicators, and other…

University of Virginia medical student evaluations of teachers at the end of clerkships are compiled into a detailed annual report containing constructive criticism and recommendations. Teaching faculty then respond by addressing the comments and initiating proposals for improvement. Experience with the system has been encouraging, and wider…

This report presents case studies of 4 adults with autism who enrolled in a work-training program utilizing a behavioral social interaction approach, and were subsequently competitively employed for 6 to 30 months. Success was associated with such factors as appropriate communication and interpersonal skills, gradual fading of supervision, and…

This article describes how to maximize clinician participation in outcome management systems: articulate the value of the outcomes management system, involve clinical staff in its design, make it relevant to treatment goals, assure clinicians it will not be used punitively, show how it will improve treatment, and obtain staff feedback. (Contains…

The purpose of the present investigation was to compare the content of 8 weeks of training in young endurance-trained male and female runners and study the potential impact of this training content on performance. Fourteen men and 11 women performed two criterion exercises until exhaustion on an outdoor track before and after the 8-week training…

This paper addresses the question: How does implementation influence the effectiveness of mandatory welfare-to-work programs? Data from three large-scale, multi-site random assignment experiments were pooled; quantitative measures of program implementation were constructed; and multilevel statistical modeling was used to examine the relationship…

This study examines how task characteristics (the number of visual chunks and the amount of planning time) and test-taker characteristics (graph familiarity) influence the perceptual and cognitive processes involved in graph comprehension, the strategies used in describing graphs, and the scores obtained on the graph description task in a…

The Commission on International Adult Education (CIAE) of the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education (AAACE) provides a forum for the discussion of international issues related to adult education in general, as well as adult education in various countries around the globe. The following purposes summarize the work of the…

The "Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act of 1998" requires that the Secretary provide the appropriate committees of Congress copies of annual reports received by the department from each eligible agency that receives funds under the Act. Congress has made "accountability for results" a central focus of the…

The Pittsburgh Public School District asked the RAND Corporation to monitor the first year's implementation (2006-2007) of Excellence for All (EFA) and provide feedback to district staff, the board, and other stakeholders. The Pittsburgh Public School District leadership developed EFA with the aim of increasing student achievement by improving…

This report discusses the use of performance indicators (PIs) in higher education, focusing on definitions, frameworks, examples, and implications for universities. It notes that demands for accountability have led to intense interest in university performance measures, and that early indicators simply described the university or the system and…

If rewards are to be used as a school-reform tool, their formats must be more closely tailored to the organizational characteristics of schools and to the purpose of improving teaching and learning. This paper describes lessons learned from Kentucky's collective incentive system, the Kentucky Instructional Results Information System (KIRIS). The…

A study examined the systemic reform process initiated in Maryland in 1991. The Maryland School Performance Assessment Program (MSPAP) consists of learning outcomes, a framework for performance assessment, guidelines for school decision making, and suggestions for staff development. One year following the initiation of the MSPAP, semi-structured…