While the 1960s and 1970s came to be known as the era of curriculum development in science, it appears that the 1980s and the 1990s will be known as the time of curriculum development with strengthened attention to implementation and evaluation. This book examines the assessment of elementary school science and provides numerous examples of…

Over the last 2 years, 3 Australian universities have been cooperating on a Commonwealth Government funded project on Distance Teaching and Evaluation Skills to identify and disseminate good practice in the professional development of distance educators. A specific and supportive professional development intervention to foster the evaluation of…

Process evaluation is a critical element in understanding the results of any research. Because action research is conducted by practitioners, there is a tendency to think that there is little need for process evaluation. Yet, the complexity of factors underlying most educational treatments tends to defeat all but the best memories when attempting…

This report establishes the performance goals for Tennessee school systems, established in accordance with the Education Improvement Act (EIA) of 1992, and describes the initiatives undertaken to assist school systems in achieving the goals. It also summarizes the results from various measures of student, teacher, and school performance.…

Curriculum frameworks for North Dakota elementary-secondary education are presented in this document. These frameworks are voluntary and serve to promote interdisciplinary learning, active learning, and student diversity. They are part of a larger systemic approach to improve instruction in the state's schools and to identify content outcomes and…

For the past 25 years, the Gallup Organization and Phi Delta Kappa (PDK), a national fraternity of educators, have conducted an annual poll of opinion on education and educational issues in the United States. This report presents findings of the poll, which was adapted for and conducted in North Carolina in 1993. Data were collected through…

The profile of native language literacy instruction for adults looks at a variety of trends and issues in the design and improvement of such programs. The first section discusses what has been learned in the last few years about the kinds of instruction offered, including basic program characteristics and models for curriculum, instruction, and…

This paper clarifies the problems of meaning and translation into practice of concepts of "quality" in higher education by examining a quality improvement program at Griffith University (Queensland, Australia). The paper notes that Australian government agencies have advanced a quality assurance (QA) approach concerned with the…

This document, the third part of a four-part analysis and assessment of Pakistan's system of primary education, presents findings from case studies of primary, middle, literacy, and skills education. The report's eight chapters are: (1) Introduction; (2) Study Methodology; (3) The Facilities; (4) School Personnel; (5) Instruction; (6) The…

The Two-Year College Development Center, in cooperation with the New York State Education Department and seven community colleges in the Mid-Hudson Region of New York State conducted a 2-year project to determine the outcomes of selected occupational technical programs and feasible ways to measure them. The project operated as a consortium with…

An overview of Canadian education is provided in this book. Chapter 1 presents basic facts and figures on the educational system's general structure and diversity and the role of the federal government. The second chapter describes provincial/territorial structure, specifically: the role of the departments of education and school board, financing,…

This document is a report to the Delaware State Legislature concerning the results of the Delaware Educational Assessment Program in 1989-90. The Stanford Achievement Test was administered statewide in grades 1 through 8 and grade 11. This administration allowed both national and state comparisons. The average Delaware student performed above the…

This paper discusses how concepts and procedural skills in problem-solving tasks, as well as affects and emotions, can be subjected to meaningful measurement (MM), based on a multisource model of learning and a constructivist information-processing theory of knowing. MM refers to the quantitative measurement of conceptual and procedural knowledge…

The experience of the speaker is applied to the changes he has seen in the field of testing over his career. Many of the concepts, issues, and controversies engaging the educational research community today had already been identified at the beginning of the speaker's career in the 1930s. A review of the literature of the past 50 years reveals one…

Accountability is high on the education reform agenda as taxpayers, business leaders, and elected officials demand proof of results. Although several states show promising improvements in their accountability arrangements, none has in place a comprehensive system. Such a system includes three fundamental accountability elements: (1) clear and…