Colorado's accountability program requires each school district to establish a citizens committee to inform the local board of community feelings regarding the district's educational program. This document reports the number of districts successfully completing the various steps in the accountability process during the 1979-80 school year.…

The call for accountability in higher education has resulted in a demand for the effective use of scarce resources and institutional survival is affected. Since the vitality of an institution is the true measure of its strength, all decisions, including cost-based ones, should be made in terms of their effect on morale and motivation. Faculty, by…

Appraisal of a school's relative effectiveness is complicated by: (1) the need to control for input differences; (2) measurement error in input measures; and (3) small sample size within schools. This study compares the performance of two successive cohorts in 19 schools in a small midwestern city on the five Iowa Tests of Basic Skills using both…

To assist local boards of education, postsecondary educational institutions, and local advisory councils in Maryland in meeting the requirements for federal funding under Title II-Vocational Education of the Education Amendments of 1976 (P.L. 94-482), this handbook provides guidelines for the establishment and responsibilities of local advisory…

The career education project conducted by the Mesa (Arizona) Unified School District was designed to develop a written objectives-based Model Accountability System (MAS) that identifies terminal career education behaviors according to several themes, specifies assessment items for each objective, and provides a monitoring system and mastery…

Public distrust in schools should not be attributed to poorer schools or less able students; it exists because we have a different kind of parent and a different world ahead. Parents of today's children were trained not to accept the status quo, but to question; furthermore, underlying parents' concern about the schools is a fear that their…

The Performance Funding Project of the State of Tennessee is discussed. The Project was instituted to explore the question of whether it is desirable and possible to allocate some portion of state funds to community colleges and universities on a performance effectiveness criterion rather than the current credit hour and enrollment criteria. Major…

The Adult Basic Education (ABE) program conducted by the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands was evaluated. Data were collected via staff interviews and record reviews during site visits at ABE facilities located in five of six district comprising the Trust Territory. Focus of the evaluation activities was on program administration,…

Changes in the structure of education and more money are what education in the eighties will require. There are some specific issues that can be identified and must be addressed in education: (1) revitalization of compensatory programs; (2) preparation of students to function in a multilingual, multicultural world; (3) accountability of educators…

While rapid shifts in the composition of student populations and increased governmental demands for accountability have underscored the importance of institutional research (IR) in community college management, most adminstrative literature still conceptualizes IR as a cybernetic, neutral, data collection function initiated in response to the…

The quality of education for nonwhite students in the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) is examined in this report. Three areas are discussed: (1) student achievement; (2) evaluation of teachers, principals, and administrators; and (3) system accountability. Emphasis is placed on the accountability of the MPS to the black, American Indian, and…

An overview of some recent trends in occupational licensing is described and some of the current problems in licensing and regulation are discussed. Issues which are covered include: the proliferation of occupations which seek licensing and the opposition to these new groups by already established related occupations; the composition of licensing…

The concepts of competency can be conceptually separated into two dimensions: minimum competency testing (MCT) and competency based education (CBE). One of the major weaknesses of the MCT movement is the growing reliance on single test scores as indicators of the total capability of students. Minorities do not reject the idea of competence, but…

The evaluation design of the 1978-79 local/state bilingual education program of Austin Independent School District is presented. The primary focus of the evaluation is the assessment of the objectives in language development and concept development submitted to the Texas Education Agency. A secondary focus is the collection of information related…

The decade of the 1960's was marked with events designed to create appropriate conditions for equal educational and occupational opportunities. There was a commitment in the 1960's to look at the urban crisis in terms of its educational, sociological, psychological, health, welfare, and housing dimensions, and researchers launched a variety of…