This 22-country survey was conducted between 1994 and 1998. Representative samples of adults aged 16-65 were interviewed and tested at home using the same literacy tests. The main purpose of the survey was to find out how well adults use information to function in society. Another aim was to investigate the factors that influence literacy…

These hearing transcripts present testimony before the Committee on Labor and Human Resources of the 105th Congress on early childhood education and related services. Participants provided different perspectives on early education, focusing on the academic achievement of American students, especially in comparison to students in other countries;…

This document provides indepth study and support of the "Canadian Language Benchmarks 2000" (CLB 2000). In order to make the CLB 2000 usable, the competencies and standards were considerably compressed and simplified, and much of the indepth discussion of language ability or proficiency was omitted, at publication. This document…

This document explains the Arkansas science benchmarks for grades K-4 which were developed to provide guidance to science teachers. The content standards for three strands--physical science systems, life science systems, and Earth science/space science systems--were identified based on grade levels. (YDS)

This study is an examination of the test results of 90 academically oriented adult participants on the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and the Canadian Language Benchmarks Assessment (CBLA), to determine the comparability of performance on the two tests and the possibility of using two tests in the academic admissions process for…

This document contains data about the results of the Kansas Writing Assessment for 1999. Because administration conditions of the assessment vary widely, the results must be interpreted with caution. Year-to-year state data are considered not comparable, but they are reported in the interests of consistency. Comparisons among districts should not…

This booklet introduces the principles and practices of benchmarking as a way of raising quality and achievement at further education colleges in Britain. Section 1 defines the concept of benchmarking. Section 2 explains what benchmarking is not and the steps that should be taken before benchmarking is initiated. The following aspects and…

Surveyed Consortium of College and University Media Centers (CCUMC) members (n=333) and conducted six case studies to determine how faculty use multimedia for instruction, hardware and software used, support for faculty multimedia development, and media management practices. The most significant finding was that the role of media centers as a…

This article provides benchmark measures of college student credit card usage by utilizing a pooled sample of over 300,000 recently opened credit card accounts. The analysis compares behavior over 12 months of account history for three groups of accounts: those opened by young adults through college student marketing programs; those opened through…

This article reviews the results from an in-depth multisite case study of 20 institutions examining approaches to student engagement exploring differences by institutional type. The two research questions pursued were: Is size related to distinctive approaches for creating an engaging environment for students? If so, in what ways? The results…

This article reviews the literature and practice concerned with the evaluation of science, technology, and innovation (STI) policies and the way these relate to theories of the innovation process. Referring to the experience of the European Union (EU), the authors review the attempts to ensure that the STI policy theory is informed by advances in…

We review a plan that attracted the attention of public sector planners everywhere, Oregon's 1989 "Oregon Shines: An Economic Strategy for the Pacific Century". In particular, we focus on Oregon's aspirations for world-class workforce quality; a status that the state's planners argued would contribute to a host of other outcomes that…

For a long time, university-business relations were a matter of individual, informal and intermittent contacts. Once the innovation process picked up speed, businesses began asking more from universities (longer-term co-operative research, for example), and governments placed university-business interaction at the centre of their innovation…

Schools and programs of social work continually strive to develop effective gatekeeping procedures to promote optimal functioning of students while maintaining quality control in professional education. Program administrators and classroom, field, and adjunct faculty are key to the process of developing and implementing student standards. This…

Increased demands for colleges and universities to engage in outcomes assessment for accountability purposes have accelerated the need to bridge the gap between higher education practice and the fields of measurement, assessment, and evaluation. The "Handbook on Measurement, Assessment, and Evaluation in Higher Education" provides higher…