Students in about 100 schools in 10 states attend classes 4 days a week, for all or part of the school year. A growing number of rural schools, faced with declining enrollments and diminishing state aid, are experimenting with this schedule. Benefits of the schedule include lower energy and transportation costs and lower absenteeism among students…

Research and evaluation activities have gradually evolved from the selection of an improvement and evaluation model, as well as data collection using an attitudinal survey and application of case study procedures along with focus group interviews, to the preparation of summary documents and specific policy recommendations. This document presents…

The Alberta (Canada) Department of Education issues "Grade 12 Diploma Examinations" for various disciplines every six months (dated January and June of each year). Except for the English and Francais examinations (which are issued only in their own language), the examinations are issued in an English edition and a French edition. The…

Recommendations are presented for the state-by-state assessment of student achievement as part of the development of educational indicators to be compared across states. The State Education Assessment Center of the Council of Chief State School Officers solicited comments from the states about developing the assessment program. Issues were…

The grading standard of the Language Skills Center at the State University of New York (Geneseo) has been adapted from the Diederich-French-Carlton Composition Scale and is designed so that instructors may respond objectively to student writing in six important areas: ideas; organization; vocabulary; sentence structure; punctuation; and…

This white paper on educational accountability was written in response to a request from the Colorado Commission on Higher Education (CCHE). Of major concern in this study of accountability are the distinctions between system-level and institutional-level obligations. The concept of accountability is developed and related to other important…

This inquiry was conducted to: (1) examine potential interactions among characteristics of survey subjects and incentives to enhance mail returns with the quality of subject responses assessed in terms of response patterns; and (2) obtain perceptions of former students on the emphasis to place on pedagogical concepts and principles in teacher…

Intended to enable Catholic educators to evaluate the reading progress of their students compared to the nation as a whole, this report presents reading achievement data for nearly 6,000 Catholic school students out of 20,000 students in grades 4, 8, and 11, assessed in 1983-84 by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The…

This investigation examines two contrasting evaluations of early childhood education: the Westinghouse-Ohio University study and the Ypsilanti Perry Preschool Project. The Westinghouse study concluded that Head Start experience had very little, if any, academic value for participating children, whereas the Perry Preschool Project concluded that…

Success may be conceptualized within five major domains: academic, aesthetic, social, physical, and moral. The five domains may be further considered either within an individual or a societal dimension, depending on which party principally benefits. Finally, success can be further subdivided into two models; one being competitive, which is termed…

Three general concerns of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) examiners in preparing this first review of Iceland's educational system were that: (1) education contribute to the broader social and economic culture; (2) it differentiate itself from the educational forms of other countries in response to Iceland's…

Large-scale educational assessments differ from familiar educational measurements by attempting to provide information about the levels and natures of skills in populations rather than in individuals. That the distinct purposes of assessment require different methodologies than individual measurement was recognized by the development of…

This serial issue is entirely devoted to the proceedings of the 1986 meeting of the "Asociacion Nacional de Universidades e Institutos de Ensenanza Superior (ANUIES)." Major attention is given to the "Programa Integral Para el Desarrollo de la Educacion Superior (PROIDES)," i.e. a comprehensive program for the development of…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of a triadic model of study skills, self-management, and motivation training on academic performance. Study subjects were freshman enrolled in study skills/life skills courses at a small Southwestern university. Two groups of students were given training in study skills and self-management…

In Canada during the past 20 years ministries of education have moved to make media study and production a mandatory component of the secondary school curriculum. Media study is evolving through three phases: from an audio-visual aids phase which was a general secondary school phenomena, through media literacy and language arts phases which have…