One of a series dealing with reading, mathematics, language arts, social studies, science, cultural arts, health, and physical education, this report on language arts is designed to help North Carolina teachers in planning instructional programs for public school students and to inform the general public of students' educational needs and…

School district climate improvement is a challenging responsibility, and the options for the task spread across a wide range. This paper describes some options and tells how to begin exercising them. A first step is gaining a new understanding of school district climate and its components. Part I describes climate in practical terms and offers a…

Georgia's Needs Assessment Package, which has many sample forms, includes a procedure which helps to identify short-range and long-range educational needs. This procedure utilizes community participation which broadens the decision-making base and serves to legitimatize actual decisions. It utilizes the opinions of professional educators,…

Monitors are provided with step-by-step directions on how to administer Pennsylvania's Educational Quality Assessment Questionnaires to intermediate school pupils. They are told what materials are needed, how to keep materials secure, and what to do if a student misses a session. Monitors are given suggestions for questionnaire administration and…

Monitors are provided with step-by-step directions on how to administer Pennsylvania's Educational Quality Assessment Questionnaires to secondary school pupils. They are told what materials are needed, how to keep materials secure, and what to do if a student misses a session. Monitors are given suggestions for questionnaire administration and…

On the basis of experiences in implementing federal programs, particularly the Trainers of Teacher Trainers (TTT) program as it was funded and administered under the Education Professions Development Act, this article makes 11 recommendations to federal agency personnel regarding needed directions for change in the area of project evaluation in…

This article presents views of proponents and opponents to standardized tests, isolates the major weakness of testing--questionable validity--and offers several recommendations for the betterment of test development and use. Some major misuses of tests include the following: (a) tests are at times administered with no clear purpose; (b) test…

This project termination report deals with an environmental education curriculum developed by the Center for the Development of Environmental Curriculum and Willoughby-Eastlake City School District (Ohio). During the three years of the project, 34 units for elementary teachers and 34 units for secondary teachers were prepared. All curriculum…

Unified organizational systems with integrated information systems are required to deliver effective referral and remedial services to children who are experiencing learning problems. However, such organized systems do not exist widely enough in our schools. The purpose of the project was to develop a consensually derived data-referral system for…

On the instruction of the Council of Ontario Universities, the Advisory Committee on Academic Planning has conducted a planning assessment for religious studies on the graduate level. The consultants' report on graduate studies in religion emphasizes the nature of the study of religion; the present situation of religious studies in the relevant…

The first part of Task 1 of the final report provides a critique of National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) objectives. The report represents part of an investigation coordinated by a special Steering Committee working under the auspices of the National Council for the Social Studies. The first section examines whether the objectives…

This report includes a capsule description of changes in science achievement, as part of the National Assessment study of changes in science achievement for 9-year-olds, 13-year-olds, and 17-year-olds attending schools. Concrete information is presented in the progress or decline of knowledge in science. It is reported that knowledge of…

Findings in industrialized countries, such as those of Jencks and Coleman, indicate that socioeconomic status has a strong influence on academic achievement and that school effects are of lesser importance. This study of socioeconomic influences and school influences on the performance of 23,615 Ugandan children taking the Primary Leaving…

This manual describes the Arizona Right to Read Needs Assessment Package, which is designed to assist individual schools in evaluating their current reading program, personnel, and achievement. The package contains an introduction followed by a summary of techniques of assessing student performance, a description of current reading programs and…

The New Jersey Department of Education conducted a national search for existing materials and procedures related to one or more of the following categories: goal-setting procedures, objectives and existing banks of objectives, assessment procedures, guidelines for program selection, and evaluation of program effectiveness and efficiency. This…