Many teachers of students with mild disabilities experience difficulty writing IEPs, and they lack a foundation in the regular education curriculum of academic skills and sequences associated with each grade level. This book was designed to provide this foundation. Presented in the form of scope and sequence charts that can be used as objectives…

Many discussions of student loan repayment focus on those students for whom repayment is a problem and conclude that the reliance on debt to finance postsecondary education is excessive. However, from both a pragmatic perspective and a logical perspective, a more appropriate approach is to develop different benchmarks for students in different…

Demand for well-qualified health care professionals (including pharmacists) is projected to increase over the next 10 to 20 years. In many jurisdictions, immigration will become an increasingly important human resource to replace aging, retiring workers and drive ongoing economic prosperity and growth. Higher education has been an underutilized…

The National Community College Benchmark Project (NCCBP) provides community colleges with a system to report data on key learning outcomes and indicators of institutional effectiveness and to compare their data with national norms and data from selected peer institutions. This chapter describes the development, current features, and anticipated…

The introduction of subject benchmarking led to fears of increased external intervention in the activities of universities and a more restrictive view of institutional autonomy, accompanied by an undermining of the academic profession, particularly through the perceived threat of the introduction of a national curriculum for higher education. For…

As the advertising industry has undergone many changes recently, advertising faculty may be wondering whether the set of courses they have been offering provides adequate preparation for the marketplace. A study examined two different approaches to curriculum review and explored their usefulness in two case studies. The first approach, Zero-Based…

Minnesota's Interagency Early Childhood Network, which includes representatives of early childhood, family, and health-related programs from four state agencies, developed this set of outcomes and indicators measuring the well-being of children and families. The outcomes and indicators are designed to be a source for community programs that focus…

Measures of institutional quality for 98 research universities were measured by the technique of spatial configuration to determine similarities and differences among the institutions. The use of research measures that directly address the concept of institutional quality or prestige was also examined (composite institutional scores derived from…

Representatives of six vendors of online library systems address key issues related to system performance: designing, configuring and sizing systems; establishing performance criteria; using benchmark and acceptance tests; the risks of miscalculations; vendor, consultant, and library roles; and related topics. (Author/EM)

Five library consultants address issues that affect online system performance: options in system design that relate to diverse library requirements; criteria that most affect performance; benchmark tests and sizing criteria; minimalizing the risks of miscalculation; and the roles and responsibilities of vendors, libraries, and consultants.…

Presents and analyzes the first year's results of a longitudinal study designed to measure teachers' and principals' stages of concern regarding implementation of a potentially controversial innovation--benchmark testing. Results indicate that the responding 241 teachers and 52 principals were positively disposed and interested in making the…

The Council of the Great City Schools, the nation's primary coalition of large urban public school systems, has prepared this report to summarize its recommendations to St. Louis about improving student achievement in its public schools. The project goals included: (1) Review the instructional program of the St. Louis schools, the unit's…

This document defines what students should know and be able to do in order to be environmentally literate. It is a guide for building a curriculum from pre-kindergarten to adult levels that should enable the learner who has mastered it to make informed environmental decisions. Educators in schools, environmental learning centers, higher education…

The "Preschool Teaching and Learning Expectations: Standards of Quality" sets a standard for preschool learning outcomes and serves as a benchmark for determining how effectively the classroom curriculum is being implemented. It provides the focus for curriculum determination and instruction for all preschool children ages three and…

These official primary trait scoring guide presents details of the 6-point scoring system used in third-grade Oregon schools to evaluate students' performance in oral reading fluency and in comprehension (as measured through retelling). The oral reading fluency benchmark portion of the scoring guide is broken down into phrasing, flow, and pace…