Student promotion, repetition, and dropout rates constitute the basic data needed to forecast future enrollment and new resources. Information on student flow is significantly related to policy formulation aimed at improving internal efficiency, because dropping out and grade repetition increase per pupil cost, block access to eligible school-age…

Focused on the development of definitions and guidelines for management statistics, this Systems and Procedures Exchange Center (SPEC) kit is based on the responses of 91 academic members of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) to a survey investigating their internal uses of statistics, external statistics reporting, and tools for…

College and University Personnel Association (CUPA) presents its survey results of salaries of administrators in higher education for 1989-90. The annual survey offers salary data on 167 administrative positions at 1,390 public and private institutions to enable decision makers to evaluate their current pay levels and plan their compensation…

A Bill (S. 2034) with a short title of the "National Education Report Card Act of 1990," was introduced in the Senate by Senators Bingaman, Mitchell, Kennedy, and Harkin. The contents of this Act include the following sections: findings, establishment, membership and appointments, functions, interim council report, annual report card,…

Some issues in defining dropouts and reporting information about them are explored, with reference to the Common Core of Data (CCD) survey of the National Center for Education Statistics. There has not been any uniform national count of how many students leave school, and no commonly accepted definition has been developed that allows a number to…

Thirty psychology majors in a Tests and Measurement class, and 49 of 65 faculty members of a liberal arts arts college developed a college-wide course ratings questionnaire. The psychology students, in class exercises and homework assignments, collected data over a 6-month period from peers (n=153) and faculty at every stage of the design process.…

The use of outcome assessment in special education is reviewed. Outcome assessments differ widely in design, measures, and data collection, but they share a common focus on outcomes as individual achievements, statuses, or behaviors. Assessments of special education outcomes often have an evaluative purpose in reflecting how well the special…

The Office of Research and Evaluation of the Dearborn Public Schools (Michigan) presents a longitudinal study to analyze grade nine student academic growth over a 2-year period utilizing the results of the Tests of Achievement and Proficiency (TAP). The TAP is a nationally normed test designed to assess student progress toward widely accepted…

Hearings on the 1990 Decennial Census were held on May 1, 1986, and May 15, 1986. The May 1 session focused on data processing procedures. Speakers included John G. Keane, Daniel G. Horvitz, William Eddy, Judith S. Rowe, Benjamin F. King, and Stephen E. Fienberg. Topics included automation of address files and questionnaire check-in; dissemination…

In longitudinal studies, the same variables must be measured, in the same way, on at least two occasions. Research personnel are very important in keeping the necessary continuity of the procedures and the comparability of the measurements over time. As staff turnover can create serious problems, this paper suggests several strategies for reducing…

Whether termed "quality indicators,""student outcomes," or "measures of accountability," the concern for educational effectiveness is surfacing as the new focus for community colleges. Key to the realization of educational accountability is the availability of solid research information that can assess to what extent results are being achieved.…

This guidebook is designed for data analysts who are working with computer data files that contain records with incomplete data. It indicates choices the analyst must make and the criteria for making those choices in regard to the following questions: (1) What resources are available for performing the imputation? (2) How big is the data file? (3)…

The Center for Education Statistics conducted the 1985-86 private school study to collect data on private elementary and secondary schools and teachers within these schools. This is the first national study to collect information directly from private school teachers. Representatives of the private school community helped develop the study…

Although scholars and policy analysts both value quality-controlled collections of research results, they evaluate research according to different criteria. Nevertheless, an examination of a pessimistic fictional research experience and a more productive actual experience indicate that, although differences in focus between scholars and policy…

Program presentations on issues related to the use of statistics by research libraries and business meeting minutes are combined in this report from the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). The full text is provided for the three papers on the program theme that were presented at the meeting: (1) "Information to Manage--The Economics of…