A kindergarten teacher, two preservice teachers, and a college consultant on educational computer technology designed and developed a 10-day whole-language integrated unit on the theme of Beatrix Potter's "Benjamin Bunny." The project was designed as a demonstration of the potential of integrating the CD-ROM-based version of…

As part of its academic testing program, the Des Moines Public Schools administer standardized, norm-referenced achievement tests. The Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS) is a norm-referenced standardized test battery that is administered to students in grades 3, 4, 6, and 7. In the 1997-98 school year, over 415 (approximately 5%) of the students…

Philadelphia's school reform initiative, Children Achieving" was evaluated. The focus in this report is on decentralization, exploring how Children Achieving is strengthening schools' capacity to make and carry out informed decisions that lead to schoolwide standards, how the new structures are working at various levels of the system, and how…

This "Policy Note" highlights new information about youth crime and prevention that suggest that California has a unique opportunity over the next several years to invest in new preventive approaches for reducing youth violence. Several surveys by the California Center for Health Improvement (CCHI) have documented that Californians share…

This report describes some of the major New York City Board of Education automated data collection systems and databases, and the ways in which information about individual students in these databases is collected from the schools, aggregated by staff in different central Board of Education offices, and used in school- and district-level reports.…

The statewide school survey monitors trends in substance use among public school students, identifies emerging problem areas, and serves as a basis of comparison for local school surveys. Chapter 1 covers "Description of Survey and Study Limitations." Chapter 2, "Comparisons with National and Other Texas Data," presents comparisons to the National…

Use of ethnographic methods to assess learning and staff development needs for workplace adult education programs is discussed, focusing on the teacher's role as ethnographic researcher. Four stages of ethnographic research are identified: (1) open-ended, inductive study; (2) structured observation; (3) analysis; and (4) speculation and sharing of…

This report reviews the current characteristics of faculty in higher education institutions compared to those of faculty members 20 years ago. It is based on fall 1995 data and 1976 comparison data. A major finding is a substantial increase (91 percent) in the number of part-time faculty compared with an increase of 27 percent in the number of…

This report offers a different perspective on education statistics by highlighting rarely used "stand-alone" statistics on public education, inputs, outputs, and descriptions, and it uses interactive statistics that combine two or more statistics in an unusual way. It is a report that presents much evidence, but few conclusions. It is not intended…

The intent of this study is to provide insight as to where schools are going in terms of their success in internationalizing the information systems (IS) curriculum, testing to see if, in fact, the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) and other external forces are evidencing any effect. This research reports the findings of…

The Public Libraries Survey, with the cooperation of all 50 state library agencies, the District of Columbia, and the United States territories, provides statistics about income, operating expenditures, staffing, size of collection, circulation, interlibrary loans, hours of operation, electronic access, and other items. One popular use of these…

Information on elementary and secondary schools and institutions of higher learning aggregated at a state level is presented. The report contains a wide array of statistical data ranging from enrollments and enrollment ratios to teacher salaries and institutional finances. The state-level statistics most frequently requested from the National…

Based on the findings of a 1998 conference on the new assessment and accountability requirements in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), this report discusses critical issues that surround the assessment provisions included in the 1997 IDEA amendments and contains recommendations related to state and district-wide assessments…

This report discusses the findings of a study that compared identified desirable characteristics of state accountability reports with 20 accountability reports generated by 7 states. Desirable characteristics included (1) clarity (the intended audience, statements of purpose, a description of the population being reported on and the states'…

This report describes the development and application of a model to study the movement of students in, through, and out of higher education in Australia. The model is designed to project the number of students, graduates, and dropouts by age, gender, and broad field of study. The model also estimates the probability of a student completing a…