In the spring of 2008, the Center on Education Policy (CEP) continued its ongoing research on the impact of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) by conducting case studies of six schools in Illinois to learn more about the effects of NCLB and related state accountability policies on curriculum, instruction, and student achievement. The schools…

This document supplements the advice given in "How good is our school?" (HGIOS)--third edition and "The Child at the Centre"--second edition which set out comprehensive quality frameworks and provide helpful advice on the process of improvement through self-evaluation. In particular, this document provides advice on the…

Which comprehensive school reform programs have been proven to help elementary and secondary students achieve? To find out, this review summarizes evidence on comprehensive school reform (CSR) models in elementary and secondary schools. Comprehensive school reform models are programs used schoolwide to improve student achievement. They typically…

This document represents an innovative and radical landmark in the development of external quality arrangements for Scotland's colleges. The quality framework and arrangements for annual engagement, subject-based aspect reports, and external review reflect new thinking nationally, within HMIE, in the Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding…

Sustainability has become a central consideration across the board in university business decisions. Passing a tipping point, it has become a pivotal focus of management. College leaders are increasingly drawing connections between sustainability, institutional missions, and higher education's fundamental purposes. Administrators readily rattle…

The "2011 State Preschool Yearbook" is the newest edition of our annual report profiling state-funded prekindergarten programs in the United States. This latest "Yearbook" presents data on state-funded prekindergarten during the 2010-2011 school year as well as documenting a decade of progress since the first…

Because there is no commonly accepted view of what makes for good writing, automated essay scoring (AES) ideally should be able to accommodate different theoretical positions, certainly at the level of state standards but also perhaps among teachers at the classroom level. This paper presents a practical approach and an interactive computer…

For the past ten years, researchers at the Center for Higher Education Policy Analysis (CHEPA) have spoken with students, teachers, counselors, administrators and family members about what is most helpful in preparing students for college. The majority of CHEPA's research has been conducted at urban, low-income schools serving high proportions of…

The primary purpose of the study was to identify successful electronic and manufacturing engineering programs at two-year colleges that Northeast Community College (a pseudonym) programs can be benched marked against. The project examined two-year college programs for increased enrollment and the number of graduates for the academic years 2000 to…

This report examines the availability and quality of predictive validity data for a selection of benchmark assessments identified by state and district personnel as in use within Mid-Atlantic Region jurisdictions. Based on a review of practices within the school districts in the region, this report details the benchmark assessments being used, in…

Benchmarks and standards have become an important part of the teachers' instructional focus since the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. As educators they all recognize the importance of having high expectations of their students. Standards help schools articulate these expectations clearly to students, their parents, and the community. Yet, there…

This article presents the development process of a consumer-oriented, illustrative benchmarking tool enabling consumers to use the results of environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) to make informed decisions. LCA provides a wealth of information on the environmental impacts of products, but its results are very difficult to present concisely…

The term "culture" has been in common use for a long time. However there is no universally accepted definition and hence it is important to define clearly what culture means in a particular research context. The research reported here is part of a project undertaken at a large Australian university in late 2005. The overall aim of the…

The political philosophy (from the U.S. Declaration of Independence) that "all men are created equal" succinctly captures the "raison d'etre" and phenomenal successes of American higher education. Today, the deepest commitment to this idea of fair play is affordable access to a higher education that offers the opportunity to cultivate knowledge,…

With some reflections on the management culture of higher educational institutions in China, this paper presents that it is not adequate to make analyses of rules and regulations from the mere perspective of institutional economics to get rid of short-term, which can be accounted for on a deeper level by the absence of management culture in the…