This position paper addresses some enduring, as well as emerging issues, associated with the crucial question of benchmarking understandings about nature of science (NOS) for precollege science education. The question of benchmarking NOS understandings is revisited in light of the often cited, continuing debates among historians, philosophers, and…

Every college and university, whether public or private; two-year, four-year, or graduate; traditional or online, depends on recruiting and enrolling new students and strives to have as many of those students as possible complete their educational programs. Knowing how effectively an institution is managing the various stages of enrollment is…

This chapter introduces the concept of benchmarking and how higher education institutions began to use benchmarking for a variety of purposes. Here, benchmarking is defined as a strategic and structured approach whereby an organization compares aspects of its processes and/or outcomes to those of another organization or set of organizations to…

This paper is a transcript of a letter written by the author, Cornelia M. Ashby, Director, Education, Workforce, and Income Security Issues, to June St. Clair Atkinson, State Superintendent of the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. In this letter, the author reports that she and her colleagues have examined the efforts of selected…

The National Quality Improvement Center on the Privatization of Child Welfare Services selected Illinois as a demonstration site in 2007 to evaluate performance-based contracting in residential treatment services. This article discusses the first two years of project implementation including developing residential treatment performance indicators,…

As researchers and science writers, the authors are always pleased when anyone takes enough interest in their work, but this time it was especially pleasing to have inspired Beets to comment on it (Beets, 2010)! The focus of his commentary is "Expected Values for Pedometer-Determined Physical Activity in Youth" (Tudor-Locke, McClain, Hart, Sisson,…

How things have changed. No longer can alumni relations rely on head counts or anecdotal feedback as indicators of a job well done. Alumni leaders now have to prove it, and to do that, they need to look at their programs with a critical eye, comparing where they stack up against peer and aspirant institutions on specific, measurable objectives. In…

The new "Reading and Writing Standards" for years 1-8 (2009) and the "Literacy Learning Progressions" (2010) are the two documents that have been published to inform the New Zealand national standards in literacy. An earlier draft "Literacy Learning Progressions" document was circulated nationwide in 2007 to allow for…

ACT has conducted over 20,000 job analyses for occupations across a diverse array of industries and occupations since 1993. This report highlights the levels of career readiness for various subgroups of ACT Work Keys® examinees in the United States and provides career readiness benchmarks for selected ACT WorkKeys cognitive skills by career…

A recent report published in the United Kingdom proposed the image of "an avalanche" to describe the radical changes affecting tertiary education in many parts of the world (Barber, Donnelly and Rizvi, 2013). Indeed, powerful transformative forces of three kinds--rupture factors, crisis factors and stimulus factors--are challenging…

This is an abridged version of the "Science Framework for the 2015 National Assessment of Educational Progress." The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and its reports are a key measure in informing the nation on how well the goal of scientific literacy for all students is being met. The framework reflects the nature and…

In 2002 the Council of the Great City Schools and its members set out to develop performance measures that could be used to improve business operations in urban public school districts. The Council launched the Performance Measurement and Benchmarking Project to achieve these objectives. The purposes of the project were to: (1) Establish a common…

Benchmarking as a type of knowledge-sharing around good practice within and between institutions is increasingly common in the higher education sector. More recently, benchmarking as a process that can contribute to quality enhancement has been deployed across numerous institutions with a view to systematising frameworks to assure and enhance the…

This paper proposes how to select a methodology to target multidimensionally poor households, and how to update that targeting exercise periodically. We present this methodology in the context of discussions regarding the selection of a targeting methodology in India. In 1992, 1997, and 2002 the Indian government identified households that are…

This review examines applications of quality management (QM) in language education. QM approaches have been adapted from methodologies developed in industrial and commercial settings, and these are briefly described. Key aspects of QM in language education are the definition of purpose, descriptions of principles and practice, including various…