The Early Childhood Atlas facilitates spatial analysis in early childhood services research for the promotion of greater quality and accessibility of early care and education. The Atlas team collects and geocodes federal, state and nongovernmental datasets about early childhood services, integrating selected data elements into its online mapmaking…

The Parents Returning to Work Program (PRTW) is a Victorian government initiative which commenced in 2003. It provides grants to assist eligible parents who wish to return to paid employment after a period of caring for children to participate in training that will increase their work skills and job prospects. This evaluation aimed to review the…

Instructional reform movements in the 1990s called for an effective and concurrent integration of various educational components. For effective classroom instructional reform, it was suggested that teaching method (pedagogy), learning theory, and technology be promoted concurrently to form synergistic relationship. Thus, the primary purpose of…

The purpose of the "International Civic and Citizenship Education Study" (ICCS) is to investigate the ways in which young people are prepared to undertake their roles as citizens in a range of countries. The study will report on student achievement on a test of conceptual understandings and competencies in civic and citizenship education. It will…

This report presents findings from a study conducted by the Community College Research Center (CCRC) on how well prepared today's community colleges are in moving toward the greater use of data and research to improve student success. Data for the study were drawn from two major sources: first, an e-mail survey of college administrators…

This manual provides information to assist schools and school systems to collect student background information as required by Education Ministers. The purpose is to enable nationally comparable reporting of students' outcomes against the "National Goals for Schooling in the Twenty-First Century." It involves the collection of…

The analysis of classroom observation data is seen as increasingly important in research on the impact of high-stakes language tests or new foreign-language programmes on students, teachers and other stakeholders. Video-recordings of language teaching and learning in classrooms impacted by such tests or programmes can provide revealing data,…

Privilege and oppression have an impact on society in numerous ways. Although studied in many disciplines, few empirical measures of these social constructs exist for educators or researchers. The 2 studies presented in this article describe the development and validation of the scores yielded by the Social Privilege Measure. (Contains 4 tables.)

In the United States in the last few years, a considerable amount of attention has been given to literacy programs as a way to close the academic gap between English-only (EO) students and English language learners (ELL). Teacher education programs around the country have been dealing with issues of academic inequity for some time. There are no…

Recently, Argyle Middle School in Montgomery County, Maryland faced the prospect of corrective action for failure to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) under the No Child Left Behind Act. The county's Office of School Performance designed the Strategic Monitoring/Intervention Process to help schools identify students' academic progress both…

In previous publications the author reported on the use of a website dedicated to French songs for an advanced French comprehension course at the university level. The present article analyzes web-tracking data captured from the website over two terms--fall 2003 and winter 2004. The variations in the amount of time students spent working on the…

Sexuality education occurs both formally and informally in the public school system. This study sought to assess sexuality education in Indiana public schools--the classroom curricula as well as students' sexuality-related questions. Data were collected from teachers, nurses, and counselors (N = 399) pertaining to the inclusion of specific topics…

Children identified as having emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) may have different out-of-home care placements than their peers without EBD. This study compared the factors influencing placement movements for 362 children with EBD and 363 children without EBD, using clinical "Child Behavior Checklist" (CBCL) scores at baseline…

The authors used the 5E learning cycle (engage, explore, explain, extend, and evaluate) and a pulmonary carbon dioxide mystery to introduce eighth grade students to the study of chemistry. The activity engages students in measurement, data collection, data analysis, media and internet research, research design, and report writing as they search…

This paper is an extension of the author's earlier work on developing management information services and creating a culture of assessment in libraries. The author will focus observations on the use of data in decision-making in libraries, specifically on the role of leadership in making evidence-based decision a reality, and will review new…