Clearly established procedures for sending, receiving, and responding to e-mail begin with planning and scheduling its use. Administrators should make appropriate choices of communication methods; use the address-book feature for individual and group e-mail addresses; use word-processing software to prepare lengthy documents and the attachment…

Faced by a tax revolt, Kingston (New York) City Schools reduced subsequent tax levies and maintained small budget increases while adding several programs. They returned money to taxpayers, settled outstanding contracts, tightened operations, froze hiring, controlled budgets, invested and spent wisely, sought grants, and got feedback. (MLH)

Offers hints for managing a classroom: (1) think about yourself as well as the students; (2) set the stage to start the class; (3) start on time; (4) help--do not enable; (5) make things easier for you and your students; (6) make the students responsible for turning in their work; and (7) share the schedule with students. (JOW)

Considers benefits of distance learning for various organizations including educational institutions, corporations, and government agencies. Topics include usefulness; measurable value added; the organizational elements model (OEM); an evaluation of distance education, from conventional instruction to future possibilities; and guidelines for…

Describes new theories of teacher professional development, identifies known costs of conventional professional development, discusses how new approaches (like collaborative problem solving and mentoring relationships) affect costs (for teacher time and supportive infrastructure), examines efficiency considerations, and highlights fiscal and…

Describes a methodology used by the Texas A&M University system to monitor the efficiency with which resources are employed. This participatory method of institutional choice can be used to plan for financial setbacks. (EV)

Discusses how handheld pen computing devices and specialized software systems can make educational facility assessment more efficient. Explores how these tools can be used for information management and for developing short and long term maintenance and capital improvement plans. (GR)

Defines a virtual team as a group of people who are working on the same business issue but are located at different geographic sites and rely mainly on some form of technology to facilitate the work discussion. Discusses benefits of virtual teams, including reduced travel costs and organizational efficiency; defining roles; selecting technology…

Part one of this article described the first two stages that schools move through as they learn to link data to higher student achievement. In stage one, schools make initial efforts to contextualize the many data sources available, but their data analysis is mostly for its own sake. In stage two--using data to improve educational efficiency--the…

In July of 2007, the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy (CEEP) at Indiana University was contracted by the state legislature to conduct an evaluation of the Indiana charter schools. The current study reports the results of an evaluation that has been designed to ensure that all objectives of the provisions of HEA 1001-2007 are fulfilled.…

Sweden reformed public education in 1991-1993. A system with private school competition was introduced and the production of public education was decentralized from central to local government. One of the aims with this reform was to increase efficiency in the production of education. In this paper, efficiency in Swedish public education is…

In this article, we present a usability experiment in which participants were asked to make intensive use of information on an intranet in order to execute job-related tasks. Participants had to work with one of two versions of an intranet: one with an organization-based hyperlink structure, and one with a task-based hyperlink structure.…

The Indiana General Assembly passed charter school enabling legislation in 2001, and the first charter schools opened their doors for the 2002-03 school year. As of fall 2008, 49 charter schools are operating in Indiana. A total of 17 of these schools are sponsored by the City of Indianapolis, Office of the Mayor, 29 schools are sponsored by…

This report, issued by the Connecticut Department of Higher Education, reports on trends in higher education for the year 2010. Six goals are presented, each with indicators. Each indicator is broken down into the following subsections: About This Indicator; Highlights; and In the Future. Most indicators also include statistical tables and figures…

Intuitively, dynamic visual stimuli, such as moving objects or flashing lights, attract attention. Visual search tasks have revealed that dynamic targets among static distractors can indeed efficiently guide attention. The present study shows that the reverse case, a static target among dynamic distractors, allows for relatively efficient…