This document is a report on the educational resources of the Hartford (Connecticut) Public Schools and the disparities between the Hartford Public Schools and other school districts. The report uses a reanalysis of existing publicly available data, including published reports of the Connecticut State Department of Education and other state and…

Beginning in fall 1991, Napa Valley College (NVC), in California, switched from essentially mandatory placement of incoming students to an advisory, self-selection system, where students receive course recommendations based on assessment test results. In order to evaluate the validity of NVC's assessment procedures, a study was conducted of…

Comparing Hmong families with other ethnic or cultural groups (whites, African-Americans, Hispanics, and other Asians), this study examined family-related supports and risks in a low-income, ethnically diverse sample of 242 children entering kindergarten in St. Paul, Minnesota. All kindergarten children from 23 kindergartens in 6 elementary…

This study investigated the utility and effectiveness of a simple dictation test for placement of students in a university's summer English-as-a-Second-Language program. The dictation test was explored as an alternative to the traditional oral interview, which had shown some problems of interrater reliability and consistency, resulting in…

This exploratory study integrated information from quantitative and qualitative data sources to highlight how different students responded to, and learned from, case-based instruction. Fifty-eight first-year veterinary students, enrolled in a biochemistry laboratory course which utilized case studies as one of the primary methods of instruction,…

The resources necessary to create, administer, and score performance assessments in science were studied. RAND and the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) designed performance tasks for science in grades five and six as part of a larger study of the feasibility of science performance assessment. Tasks were developed in pairs in task…

A project to identify alternative strategies for assessing the academic language of English language learners is reported. First, literature on the concept of academic language is reviewed, and then findings from classroom research are used to propose an alternative conceptualization of academic language, one which focuses on the role of stylistic…

Exposure to computers in school may help young people gain the computer literacy they will need to function effectively in society. The amount of access to computers at home is often directly related to socioeconomic factors. Examining the extent to which students have access to computers either at school or at home may help predict how prepared…

The potential effects of raising the minimum wage on the earnings of mothers moving from welfare to work were examined by analyzing the differences that existed in the late 1980s in the various states' minimum wage rates and data from three waves of the Survey of Income and Program Participation for the years 1985-1990 (during which time 13 states…

In response to concerns of unnecessary duplication in programs offered by Texas community/junior colleges and the Texas State Technical College (TSTC) system, TSTC conducted an examination of curricula, enrollments, and outcomes for both systems. This report provides findings from the first phase of the study based on Texas Higher Education…

In response to concerns of unnecessary duplication in programs offered by Texas community/junior colleges and the Texas State Technical College (TSTC) system, TSTC conducted an examination of curricula, enrollments, and outcomes for both systems. This document provides the second volume of the study, containing the data tables used to generate the…

A study examined the costs, outcomes, and administrative structure of the Job Corps program. Information obtained from the Department of Labor's (DOL) Office of Job Corps and discussions with DOL officials was used to study the structure of the Job Corps program, cost differences between Job Corps centers run by contractors and Civilian…

As information professionals attempt to meet the needs of scholars, a significant issue is the degree of correspondence between research tools created by library and information science professionals and research tools created and used by scholars in any particular academic discipline. Humanities scholars assign importance to the use of personal…

The Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) is the largest, most comprehensive, and most rigorous international comparison of education ever undertaken. During the 1995 school year, the study tested the mathematics and science knowledge of a half-million students from 41 nations at five different grade levels. In addition to…

Discussion of one form of pragmatic competence, projecting a sense of stylistic voice into texts, explores how writing in a non-native language affects the ability to express stylistic voice and enter into social dialogue with readers. Using the published reflections of authors writing professionally in a non-native language, the analysis shows…