The Florida Writing Assessment was implemented in grades 4, 8, and 10 in 1998 as required by the Florida legislature. The assessment is designed to measure students' proficiency in writing responses to assigned topics within a designated testing period. This report contains writing assessment results for the whole state, school districts, and…

The Florida Writing Assessment was implemented in grades 4, 8, and 10 in 1998 as required by the Florida legislature. The assessment is designed to measure students' proficiency in writing responses to assigned topics within a designated testing period. This report contains writing assessment results for the whole state, school districts, and…

Analysis of the vocational education and training (VET) sector in Australia shows that almost 1.54 million students undertook training in the publicly-funded VET sector; 51.5 percent were males and 48.5 percent were females; since 1997, total annual hours of training increased by 10.6 million to 312.8 million hours; and 4 fields of study accounted…

This study examined the institutional satisfaction of approximately 2,250 institutions of higher education participating in the Federal Direct Loan and Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) programs during the 1997-1998 academic year. Among major findings were: (1) both Direct Loan and FFEL institutions were satisfied with their loan programs,…

This report presents findings of the second follow-up in the Baccalaureate and Beyond Study, a longitudinal study which is tracking students who received a bachelor's degree in academic year 1992-93. Major findings indicated that: (1) when they graduated from college, 85 percent of the degree recipients expected to earn an advanced degree; by…

This paper provides an overview of different electronic portfolio development tools and introduces a strategy for using Portable Document Format (Adobe Acrobat PDF) files to store and organize electronic teaching portfolios. A 12-step process for constructing electronic portfolios is described, as are storing the working portfolio, publishing the…

South Carolina's Basic Skills Assessment Program (BSAP) assesses basic skills in reading, mathematics, writing, and science for grades 3, 6, 8, and 10 (exit examination). In 1998, the tests were administered statewide in April. This report provides 3 years of data on percentages of students meeting state standards. The data are reported by…

This paper explores gender-equity issues from three distinctive perspectives: numeric distribution, compensation, and sense of empowerment. It is based on large-scale national surveys--the School and Staffing Surveys--in which public-school administrators assessed the differences between female and male principals. Based on findings from the…

This report summarizes findings of a survey of 684 higher education institutions offering graduate programs in the United States; responses were received from 634 institutions. Chapter 1 presents highlights of the survey, including a profile of fall 1997 graduate enrollment for each of four regional graduate school associations (Southern,…

This paper examines the effectiveness of increasing the confidence of preservice teachers in using technology for personal and instructional purposes as a result of participating in an introductory educational technology course offered at the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education. Course participants attended sections designed for…

This paper is a report on the development and findings of an on-going study being conducted on 126 middle schools in rural eastern North Carolina. An analysis of the technological readiness of each school is being followed with a program to offer school leaders a technology design and teacher training that will work in their schools. This includes…

This paper is an annotated bibliography of 16 publications from 1994 through 1997 investigating the influence of CD-ROM technology in reading instruction and language development. Entries are listed alphabetically by author. In addition to full bibliographic information, each entry summarizes the publication in a few paragraphs. (EV)

This text provides a solid introduction to the foundations of research methods, with the goal of enabling students and professionals in the field of applied linguistics to become not just "casual" consumers of research who passively read bits and pieces of a research article, but "discerning" consumers able to effectively use published research…

Inquiries have been made from time to time with reference to the opportunities open to Chinese students in American colleges and universities. Such inquiries have of late been urgently presented by representatives of the United States in the Chinese Empire, who have taken a deep interest in the progress and influence of American educational ideas…

Using data from a sample of 10 colleges at which most students had taken both SAT I: Reasoning Test and SAT II: Subject Tests, the authors simulated the effects of making selection decisions using SAT II scores in place of SAT I scores. Specifically, they treated the students in each college as forming the applicant pool for a more select college,…