Researchers have found that students who attend Catholic high schools tend to outperform public high school students on standardized tests of achievement. Although many aspects of this finding have been examined in subsequent research, little attention has been paid to the issue of how ability grouping affects achievement across school sectors. A…

An impact analysis of the Vocational Opinion Index Transition System (VOITS) was conducted by studying the first six months of its implementation at a Minneapolis vocational training center. (The VOITS program provides skills training personnel with an early diagnosis of an individual's "Job Readiness Posture" and guidelines for the…

As the third in a series of reports describing first-time students in the Virginia Community College System (VCCS), this report provides data on demographic, socioeconomic, and academic characteristics, and on student goals. In addition, 1975-76 student data are compared to 1973-74 and 1974-75 data and American Council on Education norms for two-…

The report has two purposes: (1) to describe the current status of high school courses in four midwestern states, and (2) to describe in specific terms the status of social studies programs in those states. For both studies, 265 schools in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska were grouped by enrollment figures into five classifications ranging…

As the several specific applications in this paper demonstrate, multidimensional scaling provides a long-needed means for investigating and describing spatial relationships among speech varieties. It is especially applicable to the relationships among varieties of a single language (or more properly, linguistic "cline"), which, as is…

Of the 27 million poor people in the United States in 1970, 10 million lived in the 11 Southern states. This was 38% of the nation's poverty population, making the South's poverty rate twice that of the remaining 39 states. This study, essentially a statistical analysis of regional poverty data derived from the 1970 Census, identifies the South's…

A request to develop instruments for assessing local foster care costs provided the impetus to examine family foster care in depth. Based on data from original studies done in Delaware and nationally during 1974-75 and on review of other research available, the study examined the history and connection of foster care to rural areas in the United…

The nature of the Cooperative Extension Service in agriculture was examined to identify aspects that could be applied to the design of an educational extension service. To learn about the organization, programs, and priorities of Cooperative Extension, employees of the state extension services in California, Colorado, New Mexico, New York, and…

Using a cross-country framework which draws on the experience of the developed nations--Western Europe, Canada, the United States, and Japan--this study examines the way countries view the problems of the transition from school to work and the role of the transition services in smoothing the passage. Focus is on the formal and public transition…

Information on operating grants for Ontario universities in 1983-84 is presented. Indicators of public support for universities in Ontario and other Canadian provinces are compared, and indicators of government support for various public expenditures within Ontario, including universities, are examined. Both interprovincial and intraprovincial…

Data pertaining to some basic aspects of women's participation in selected developing countries are presented in 13 charts, arranged alphabetically by region and country within region. Countries in each of the three major developing regions--Africa, Asia, and Latin America--are included when possible. Each chart presents data for a single topic in…

A new statistical measure termed the Composite Indicator of Changes (CIC) reflects overall changes in average salaries and wages paid by public school systems in much the same way that the Dow-Jones averages reflect price changes in the stock market. The CIC is useful for comparing salary trends among various categories of personnel, among…

Statistical data and trends relating to the enrollment of minorities in higher education in Pennsylvania for the fall 1980 term are examined. There were 49,060 minority students enrolled in 1980 compared to 45,083 minority students in 1978. Minority students comprise 9.6 percent of the total enrollment, and 81.5 percent of all minorities are…

Information reporting at traditionally black colleges and universities was reviewed, based on the Higher Education General Information Survey (HEGIS) files for 36 institutions. The objective was to determine the quality of the data submitted by seven of these institutions, and to suggest actions for improving the quality of the HEGIS information…

The history and structure of education in the Netherlands, the relationship of that structure to educational systems in selected other countries, and the current status of educational innovation in the Netherlands are the major topics of this paper. The author discusses briefly the development of national educational policy, the place of private…