This publication provides a comprehensive view of kindergarten through community-college education in Iowa. It describes input indicators (which are somewhat fixed by outside constraints), process indicators (over which school districts have some control), and outcome indicators (which result from planned district programs). Information for…

Florida's School Improvement and Educational Accountability program is described in this guidebook. Part 1 explains the what, why, and how of the plan, which seeks to improve student performance by defining expectations and outcomes. Chapters provide information on the following: social and demographic changes in the state; the Education…

A study to examine quality and standards in distance education identified the elements of quality, indicators that would signify their achievement, and processes that foster the achievement of quality. It focused on perceptions of quality of particular stakeholders. Documentation provided by institutions showed that they define and determine what…

Substantive arguments on school reform may be disguising a hidden debate over the process and politics of such reform--a debate over who should be responsible for educating our youth, the parties responsible for the current difficulties, and how severe these difficulties are. This document attempts to identify the attitudes that drive this hidden…

This workbook, the third in a series of "Prevention Plus" publications, provides a step-by-step approach to assessing alcohol and other drug prevention programs at the school and community level. Program assessment is presented according to a four-step model: (1) goal and desired outcome identification; (2) process assessment; (3)…

Findings from a study of junior and high school students' views of Indiana school life are presented in this report. The Indiana Youth Poll was administered to a total of 1,560 students from 204 public and 293 private schools in two stages: (1) to individuals; and (2) to discussion groups of 3 to 6 students. Chapter 1 explores students' views…

The growth of home schooling over the last 20 years in Maine and across the nation, state responses, and current controversies are described in this paper. Following an introduction, the first part provides definitions and discusses legal concerns of home schooling. The next part provides a historical overview that examines public school…

This manual describes two methods of assessing college students' conceptual structures in the interest of student evaluation. The focus is on the mental frameworks (conceptual structures) that enable students to remember and apply facts and theories. The guide offers two methods, the "ordered-tree" and the "fill-in-the-structure." An introduction…

Based on personal experiences in conducting intensive ethnographic fieldwork, the social, emotional, and personal aspects of fieldwork that are often neglected in the literature are considered. The fieldwork involved observations within five diverse secondary schools during a 2-year period in conjunction with a project on microcomputer…

Some of the issues regarding the estimation of reliability for performance assessments are explored, and a methodology is suggested for determination of reliability. In performance assessment, the magnitude of the reliability coefficient may be less than that obtained for a standardized test, since part of the potential use of performance…

Persons aged 16 to 75 in 1,803 Mississippi households were interviewed over 6 months in 1990 to develop a profile of the literacy proficiencies of the adult population of the state. Results were reported in three areas of task types: prose literacy, document literacy, and quantitative literacy. Some of the findings were the following: (1)…

This instrument is designed as a district-level self-study evaluation tool. Its purpose is to assist school districts to identify strengths and weaknesses in their programs and thereby help districts work toward improvement and support of quality in their schools. The instrument is a series of checklists organized under 10 categories using 2…

The Primary Trait System (PTS) of scoring was devised by the National Assessment of Educational Progress to score large numbers of natural writing samples. Essentially, PTS permits evaluation of writing in an objective way, but one that does not rely on scoring surface features such as mechanics, grammar, or spelling. While the assessment value of…

Outlines the Perry Scheme of Development, (which describes student developmental processes in terms of forms of thought and styles of establishing values and personal identity) as a useful analytical framework and describes its actual and potential uses in student evaluation, faculty development, instructional development and program design and…

The author contends that empirical analyses of productivity have placed much more importance on the availability of data than on the suitability of data. He recommends compiling evidence about the interface of the schooling system and society and then examining incentive structures and tradeoffs among alternative production possibilities. (JT)