In 1995, a 5-year collaborative research and development project began examining conditions and practices in Kentucky schools that are linked most strongly with improvement in a school's writing score on the statewide portfolio assessment. An examination of over 1,200 schools with complete writing portfolio scores for 1992-96 identified 42 schools…

Educational institutions, families, and communities are not meeting the educational needs of more than 50 percent of the students enrolled in public and private schools in the United States. In 1997, only 43 percent of high school seniors reported themselves to be in demanding "academic" programs, compared with 45 percent in…

This is the first annual report of the 17-month initial study of Pennsylvania charter schools. The document contains interim information about the status and development of the state's charter schools and the charter-school initiative as a whole; it is not intended to be a summative evaluation of individual schools or the initiative, and it is not…

Most often, new teachers default to the pedagogical practices they themselves were exposed to as teacher candidates. If teacher education programs are to promote the value of collaboration, they must teach and model collaborative pedagogy within their programs. This study is a qualitative examination of the soundness of two forms of collaborative…

This report discusses the outcomes of a study that investigated teacher perceptions of the educational value of the Indiana Assessment System of Educational Proficiencies (IASEP) as an effective tool used to evaluate educational progress for students with moderate and severe disabilities. Fifteen teachers of students with moderate and severe…

This document is a report on how California community colleges can incorporate customer satisfaction models and theories from business to better serve students. Emphasis is given to two levels of customer satisfaction: macro- and micro-models. Macro-models look at how customer satisfaction relates to other elements or priorities of community…

This document is a report on a comparison of unrestricted Education and General (E&G) expenditures at the City University of New York (CUNY) and other select universities, colleges, and community colleges between the 1990 and 1998 fiscal years. Unrestricted funding revenue is limited to public support and tuition. Revenue from private gifts,…

The effects of a nearly complete standards-based system in mathematics were evaluated. The Pittsburgh Public School system, Pennsylvania, has adopted a standards-based system that has been largely put into place between 1992 and 1998. The program includes content and performance standards, standards-based assessments, standards-based instructional…

This brief paper summarizes a review of biennial performance reports filed by all 50 states concerning student performance goals and indicators required under the 1997 amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. It notes that the state reports varied extensively in level of detail, clarity of content, and type of supporting…

Ideas about educational assessment are synthesized to construct a Quality Assessment Checklist that can be used to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of classroom assessments. Sound assessment begins with clear and appropriate learning targets. Once learning targets have been identified, they need to be matched with appropriate methods.…

This report contains information on Maryland and its 24 school systems. The data reported here were chosen for statewide reporting because they can be influenced by the school; are comparable across the state; are essential for student and school improvement; can help improve classroom instruction; and can be measured by statewide standards. Each…

To make the transition from traditional assessment, which was often counterproductive, to an array of assessment applications that will be more constructive for students, teachers must expand their vision of the relationship between assessment and effective schools. Assessment must be used to inform classroom decision making, and it must become…

The purposes of this book are to help teachers understand the rationale and nature of the current emphasis on U.S. education on standards and to provide classroom teachers with guidance on the many ways the standards movement might affect their classrooms. Approaches to implementing standards may be organized into two general categories, indirect…

This paper focuses on the funding of court-ordered desegregation plans in St. Louis and Kansas City and the ongoing search for fiscal equity in Missouri's 522 school districts. It describes how school-funding policy issues in the two cities have dominated legislative discussion in Missouri and lists the landmark dates in desegregating the state's…

From 1992 to 1997, a joint Russian-Dutch project team contributed to the elaboration of education standards and an educational assessment system in the Russian Federation in the wake of the transition in the Russian Federation from a centralized to a decentralized society. The chapters in this book describe the results of the project and provide…