Following the lead of Xerox and Ford, U.S. industry is embracing benchmarking as fundamental to quality improvement efforts. Schools can adopt this practice by comparing themselves to the best schools. The first steps are selecting specific improvement areas and identifying model schools for comparison. Visionary leadership is essential. (MLH)

Summarizes federal and state actions regarding national standards and describes two private groups: the College Board and its partner the Educational Testing Service; and the New Standards Project, a joint effort of the National Center on Education and the Economy and the Learning Research and Development Center. (MLF)

Cautions that Year 3 and Year 5 Literacy Benchmarks, which set minimum literacy and numeracy standards for all Australian students, can measure but cannot transform student outcomes. Calls upon English professionals to put forth constructive suggestions for effective teaching methods that will enable students to reach the required goals. (NH)

Preschool and kindergarten teachers can help young learners meet early literacy standards without sacrificing developmentally appropriate practice. Several professional associations have described appropriate expectations for children of different age levels known as milestones, developmental accomplishments, and benchmarks. (MLH)

The master of management program at Cornell University focused on competency-based development of skills for the hospitality industry through core courses, minicourses, skill benchmarking, and continuous improvement. Benefits include a shift in the teacher role to advocate/coach, increased information sharing, student satisfaction, and clear…

Offers case studies of best training practices in leading companies (AEtna, Andersen Worldwide, Boeing, Digital Equipment, Tektronix, Texas Instruments, Allstate, and Sprint), elected by the Benchmarking Forum of the American Society for Training and Development. The practices are technology based and performance oriented and herald common…

Addresses the problem of benchmarking image browsers. Existence of different search paradigms for image browsers makes it difficult to compare them. Currently, the only admissible evaluation method involves conducting large-scale user studies. An automatic image browser benchmark is proposed that uses structured text annotation of the image…

What is the impact of an academic library consortium on the perceptions of library services experienced by users of the member institutions' libraries? What is the impact of an academic library consortium on the perceptions of library services experienced by users of the member institutions libraries? In 2002 and 2003, OhioLINK (Ohio's consortium…

A strategic planning model for colleges and universities is presented which integrates competitive benchmarking and an adaptation of Hill's manufacturing strategy model. Hill's model is altered to focus on student-winners and is used to design programs of study and supporting services. Benchmarking is used as a key component of the planning…

Budget pressures compel everyone in higher education to demonstrate value in IT investments, using both quantitative and qualitative information. Like many institutions, however, both Stanford and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have found themselves forced to rely more on anecdotes than on management information to guide decisions. In…

This is the first in a series of articles that address the use of educational indicators to inform policy. The aim of the series is to provide an in-depth discussion of a single indicator or set of educational indicators from a data-user perspective. Each article will present the most recent cross-national comparisons and provide practical…

This policy research document is intended for Louisiana policymakers to use when examining possible changes to the state assessment's alignment with the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The 2009 NAEP test is not yet in existence, so the purpose of this report is to give policymakers a head start in determining where they might,…

This article presents a two-round discussion that centered around the question: "How well has UNESCO framed its own proposed role in meeting Education for All objectives as well as the roles of other UN organizations, national governments, and civil society actors?" The participants reviewed the most recent draft of UNESCO's "Global Action Plan"…

Analysis of the experiences of four farmer groups set up to learn how to jointly manage local natural resource issues shows that the groups are going though two simultaneous processes. One builds technical competency in natural resource management and the other is the underpinning social process that allows the groups to make decisions and work…

Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) has been shown to be effective in randomized controlled trials with women with borderline personality disorder and histories of chronic self-inflicted injury including suicide attempts. The present study is a pre-post replication of a comprehensive DBT program in a community mental health center for individuals…