How influential has the "US News" Best Colleges ranking been over the last twenty-five years since it was first started in 1983? In what ways does this influence manifest itself? There is strong evidence of the impact of the US News rankings among consumers, prospective students and their parents, and the higher education establishment in the…

Mirroring national trends, children of color in Washington state's King County are overrepresented at every point in the child welfare system and fare worse by most measures than are Caucasian children. The King County Coalition on Racial Disproportionality was formed to reduce and ultimately eliminate racial disproportionality in the county's…

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) was tasked with identifying the key science concepts for science literacy in K-12 students in America (AAAS, 1990, 1993). The AAAS Atlas of Science Literacy (2001) has organized roughly half of these science concepts or benchmarks into fifty flow charts. Each flow chart or strand map…

The game presented in this article provides for students' development of the use of models, benchmarks, and equivalent forms to judge the size of fractions in a motivational and flexible way.

Leadership coaching has become vitally important to today's most successful businesses. This book is a landmark resource that presents a variety of perspectives and best practices from today's top executive coaches. It provides valuable guidance on exactly what the best coaches are now doing to get the most out of leaders, for now and into the…

The purpose of this manuscript is to investigate the borrowing and use of three business principles, benchmarking, merit pay, and students as customers in higher education. This is accomplished by first looking into the borrowing of educational models. After which, the purpose of higher education and for-profit business is defined using a systems…

The Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) approach has provided many corporations with a tool for adapting to ongoing shifts in demands and resources, and it can offer academic settings similar assistance. CQI offers a mechanism for building a collaborative process that can help departments define their unique strengths and cultivate a distinctive…

Explains how training organizations in high-performance companies such as Motorola are different from those in low-performing ones. Identifies management practices: customer focus, training closer to customers, leadership, employee involvement, innovation, process improvement, improvement measurement, and change management. (JOW)

Discussion of benchmarking focuses on the use of internal and external benchmarking by special librarians. Highlights include defining types of benchmarking; historical development; benefits, including efficiency, improved performance, increased competitiveness, and better decision making; problems, including inappropriate adaptation; developing a…

Describes benchmarking, a process of finding the world-class examples of a product, service, or operational system, and adjusting products, services, or systems to meet or beat that standard. (JOW)

Discusses a survey conducted by the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) that provides preliminary evidence that companies that invest more heavily in training are more successful and profitable. Describes the free benchmarking service offered by ASTD. (Author/JOW)

Offers benchmarks for training including collection of data and clarification of its uses, explanation of the reasons for benchmarking, and use of a reliable data-collection tool. Demonstrates how benchmarking training increases understanding of how training is practiced. (JOW)

Many schools are moving to develop benchmark tests to monitor their students' progress toward state standards throughout the academic year. Benchmark tests can provide the ongoing information that schools need to guide instructional programs and to address student learning problems. The authors discuss six criteria that educators can use to…

Across the United States, school districts are adopting benchmark assessments to help teachers modify instruction over the course of a school year. Yet many teachers remain wary. In this article, the author presents views from teachers regarding the benchmarks.

The purpose of the provincial ESL (English as a second language) articulation process is to maintain high standards of quality in ESL programming at the public post-secondary institutions of British Columbia, as well as to facilitate access to programs at other public institutions for students wishing to transfer. This ninth edition of the ESL…