This document contains the testimony given by Cornelia M. Blanchette, associate director of education and employment issues in the Health, Education, and Human Services Division of the U.S. Department of Education. The document discusses challenges that the Department of Education faces in carrying out its mission in a cost-efficient and effective…

Developed to help ensure that the unique characteristics of community college occupational education are reflected in the current national movement toward institutional accountability, this monograph describes a model accountability system for community colleges. Following introductory materials, the focus of institutional effectiveness is…

One of the ideas frequently offered for the improvement of American education, privatization, has the advantage of conforming to the popular beliefs that markets produce better results than do government entities. This popular support has been a major reason for the willingness of local officials to consider changes that dismantle or supersede…

This congressional report argues that the costs of the current guaranteed lending program for postsecondary education can be reduced in three ways: (1) by eliminating more-than-competitive returns to private lenders; (2) by reducing administrative costs; and (3) by reducing default costs. It is suggested that the first solution can be accomplished…

The Clark County (Nevada) School District introduced performance assessments into its assessment program for grades one through six as part of an effort to bring the assessment program in line with the revised curriculum. To study the effectiveness of these assessments, reading performance assessment results for grades three through five were…

The original National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has been criticized for its limited ability to provide information that is useful at a variety of levels. As a result, Congress authorized a voluntary NAEP Trial State Assessment Program for the assessment of mathematics at grade 8 in 1990, reading at grade 4 in 1992, and mathematics…

The evaluation process provides valuable information so that practitioners may share and benchmark their efforts to improve and enhance the quality of the educational reform initiative called tech prep. Evaluation should be part of every phase of a tech prep initiative, from needs assessment to completion. A tech prep program is typically at one…

This collection of descriptions of research at the Center for Research on Effective Schooling for Disadvantaged Students opens with the discussion of a synthesis of research on the effects of one-to-one tutoring programs used in first grade to prevent reading failure produced by Barbara Wasik and Robert Slavin. The synthesis reviews stringent…

Approximately two-thirds of the U.S. Department of Labor's (DOL's) fiscal year 1995 (FY95) budget of $34.3 billion consists of mandatory spending on income maintenance programs. Of the remaining $10.7 billion financing DOL's other functions, approximately $6.9 billion is allocated to employment training activities and $2.93 billion is allocated…

As a solution to the problem of serving large numbers of students with a small staff, the Community College of Rhode Island (CCRI) has adopted three new technologies to advise and register students and respond to telephone inquiries. The first of the technological innovations is TELUS, a telephone voice response registration system offered as an…

The history of unpaid work experience shows that work requirements for welfare recipients have often been proposed and attempted. The consistent trend has been to place greater emphasis on employability services. Studies of nine welfare-to-work programs providing unpaid work experience indicate that the level of participation is limited by factors…

This publication provides information on implementation of an integrated learning system for computer-assisted instruction (CAI) in adult learning environments. The first of the document's nine chapters is an introduction to computer-delivered instruction that addresses the appropriateness of computers in instruction and types of CAI activities.…

The ordinary conduct of school business is accompanied today by risks that were rare or unknown a few decades ago. School administrators are continually being challenged to develop new strategies to safeguard their districts' assets. Risk management is a coordinated effort to protect an organization's assets, both human and financial, from all…

For many people, school reform means taking the responsibility for goal setting away from teachers and assessing common student accomplishments, but the costs and benefits of this accountability strategy have not been determined. The difference between the aims of education represented by test scores, and those represented by the activities of the…

The print-based model of distance education through correspondence continues to be used, but is being supplemented and, in some cases, replaced, by other media. A second generation of distance education in the 1960s and 1970s was characterized by reliance on open broadcasting, supported by correspondence instruction and print materials. A third…