Technology is an integral part of educational goals today. A study of technology use in a large urban Midwestern school district found that teachers have equipment available to them, but it is oftentimes inadequate, inconvenient, or not working. Teachers would like to use technology, but in reality they don't use it. Part of the reason is lack of…

The study examines the extent to which elementary education teacher preparation programs in 36 randomly selected colleges and universities in the six Southeast Region states integrate content related to students with disabilities. Findings indicate that a variety of strategies are utilized to integrate disability content into teacher preparation…

Background: Schools in K-12 have generated mission statements as ways of focusing their efforts and energies in specific areas. These mission statements vary by institutional setting as a function of the stakeholders and constituent groups who facilitate their development. To date, no studies were located in which the mission statements of…

This paper offers an examination of the holistic assessment used for the Graduation Writing Test (GWT) at California State Polytechnic University at Pomona for nonnative speakers of English. Holistic assessment is a widely accepted method of evaluating student writing at the university level for administration, placement, proficiency, and…

An attempt was made to evaluate the standard error of equating (at the mean of the scores) in an ongoing testing program. The interest in estimating the empirical standard error of equating is occasioned by some discomfort with the error normally reported for test scores. Data used for this evaluation came from the Admissions Testing Program of…

Most libraries involved to any extent with total quality management (TQM) realize that successfully gathering information from their customers is the key to improving services. To do this libraries must employ a variety of methodologies, both quantitative and qualitative research. Quantitative primary data is usually collected in libraries by…

The consequences of indexing the minimum wage to average wages in the U.S. economy were analyzed. The study data were drawn from the 1974-1978 May Current Population Survey (CPS) and the 180 monthly CPS Outgoing Rotation Group files for 1979-1993 (approximate annual sample sizes of 40,000 and 180,000, respectively). The effects of indexing on the…

This booklet provides some systematic guidelines for assisting educational planners to discriminate between high-quality educational research and research that should not be relied on for decision making. The guidelines focus on educational research studies that employ either experimental or survey-research methodologies. A checklist is presented…

The social interactions that occur during pair problem solving were studied using a computer tool and without using the tool. The computer tool, (the TAPS system) is an instructional system that presents complex word problems and provides a graphics user interface with tools for constructing problem trees (network structures showing…

This paper focuses on the role that job analysis plays under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The most obvious use of job analysis data is in defining the essential functions of each job. The job analysis technique used should: list the functions of the job, define which functions are essential rather than marginal, and offer proof of…

In 1990, Milwaukee (Wisconsin) became the site of the first publicly funded school-choice program providing low-income parents with vouchers that could be used to send their children to secular, private schools. An evaluation of Milwaukee's school-choice experiment was conducted by a team of researchers, headed by John Witte at the University of…

This digest describes some basics of the construction of multiple-choice tests. As a rule, the test maker should strive for test item stems (introductory questions or incomplete statements at the beginning of each item that are followed by the options) that are clear and parsimonious, answers that are unequivocal and chosen by the students who do…

This report addresses the relationship between tuition, financial aid, and access to public higher education through an economic analysis of data from individual states from 1976 to 1993. The analysis focuses on states, rather than the individual, as the unit of observation and how state policies regarding the setting of tuition rates and…

The feasibility of policies encouraging more part-time employment as a cure for unemployment in Germany was examined through a comparison of the employment policies and labor markets of selected Organization for Economic Development (OECD) countries and the United States. OECD labor force statistics for the years 1972-1992 were analyzed to…

A study of 401 Chicago State University (Illinois) undergraduate students in elementary Spanish courses investigated the relationship between students' completion of homework assignments, both brief and lengthy, and student achievement on five to six teacher-developed exams administered during the semester. The study spanned six semesters. Results…