This SPEC (Systems and Procedures Exchange Center) Kit presents the results of a survey of Association of Research Libraries (ARL) member libraries designed to document how ARL member libraries are collecting, using, and modifying their data on reference service transactions. A total of 74 of 124 ARL member libraries responded to the survey. A…

Distance education--offering courses by Internet, video, or other forms outside the classroom--is a fast growing part of postsecondary education. The Government Accounting Office (GAO) was asked to review the state of distance education at Minority Serving Institutions, which are schools that serve high percentages of minority students, including…

The advent of the World Wide Web as a platform for the dissemination of survey instruments to diverse populations and the electronic recording of response data has changed the timeliness and cost effectiveness of survey administration. The implications of the new ability to track response behavior patterns will have a major impact on the field of…

High schools are increasingly expected to use data for improvement and to provide evidence that programs and instructional practices are preparing all students to develop essential knowledge and skills. This publication describes how schools can develop the capacity to analyze and use data as a core component of improving secondary schools using…

This mandated report to Congress describes the background and purposes of a national study of Head Start impact, the progress of the study, current activities to conduct a field test and prepare for the main study, and the projected timeline for study completion. The report notes that in 2000, a contract was awarded to determine on a national…

A Canadian national study provides provincial data on the country's publicly funded school facilities including school building age, student achievement and school condition, fiscal condition, maintenance, and energy usage. The study reveals that education ministries and school systems have engaged in an aggressive building program in the past two…

A survey of academic reference librarians in North Carolina provided data for an examination of differences in survey administration on paper and the World Wide Web. Research via the Internet is becoming more attractive for many researchers, but the effects of this medium upon research outcomes have been little explored. This study examined in…

The initiatives taken by one school district to support professional development for principals in using data for school planning and reform were studied. A data-planning training model was developed in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) (California) to build skills principals need to read, interpret, and use multiple sources of…

Since ethnicity is so often used in research on educational outcomes, this study examined the consistency with which students at Kapiolani Community College (Hawaii) reported their ethnic background. The study compared two different sources of ethnic data: the college application form and an interest inventory that all students fill out and submit…

A study explored the meanings of democracy held by teachers and students in each of the three types of secondary schools in an emerging democracy (the Czech Republic) by locating the meaning in multi-dimensional semantic space. Data were collected during 2 months of fieldwork conducted in the Czech Republic during the fall of 1997. Students and…

The welfare and treatment of children is a key test of society's commitment to human and social development. This report details a study of the implementation of the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in the United Kingdom (UK) and contrasts the U.K. approach with those adopted in other states, focusing on those at…

The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) partnered with Andrew Porter and John Smithson of Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER) to develop an advanced, in depth approach to collecting and reporting data on the "enacted curriculum" in K-12 math and science, i.e. the actual subject content and instructional practices experienced…

In this volume, researchers, practitioners, participants, and scholars address the proliferation of methodologies, ethical and disciplinary concerns, and issues of equity and diversity such research raises from a wide variety of viewpoints. "Acts of Inquiry in Qualitative Research" also presents a broad assortment of articles by authors…

High School and Beyond (HS&B), is the National Center for Education Statistics' (NCES's) national longitudinal study of the high school sophomores and seniors of 1980. As one component of the base year data collection, teachers were asked to fill out a short questionnaire concerning those HS&B students whom they had taught during the…

It is the purpose of this paper to discuss one qualitative research method, participant observation, which describes and analyzes a setting based on data that has been laboriously and systematically collected and analyzed. (Author/RK)