This report examines minority faculty and the representation of female faculty and faculty with disabilities. The report includes a close examination of the state's two fellowship programs for minority graduate students, the Illinois Minority Grant Incentive Program and the Illinois Consortium for Educational Opportunity Program. To address the…

This manuscript is the outcome of the first year of a two-year project designed to explore what works in reading instruction for students who are highly mobile. The project includes several components. The first was to conduct an extensive literature review to identify what is already known (the focus of this document). In addition to the…

As part of the "Assessing the New Federalism" project monitoring and assessing the devolution of social programs from the federal to the state and local levels, this report examines the child care providers upon whom the child care subsidy system depends. The report relies on data collected from subsidy agency administrators, key child…

Public Agenda has compiled this review of survey research on the affordability of higher education. Relevant survey findings from research conducted by Public Agenda and by other organizations were reviewed and two focus groups were conducted in Philadelphia, one with members of the general public and one with parents of high school and college…

This paper describes data from focus groups conducted with elementary teacher mentors at two Professional Development School (PDS) sites. The focus group sessions emphasized four themes: teachers' decisions to get involved in a PDS, teachers' perceived barriers to PDS success, how teachers benefit from PDSs, and recommendations for improvement.…

This report provides an overview of the efforts of Iowa's community colleges to train workers for the emerging bioscience/biotechnology sector. The report explains the programs available and the future plans of individual community colleges designed to educate students for careers in the biosciences. Also detailed are a variety of creative…

Responding to an increasingly urgent need for collaboration between mathematicians and mathematics educators, the study reported in this paper engages mathematicians as educational co-researchers in a series of themed Focus Group interviews where a pre-distributed sample of mathematical problems, typical written student responses, observation…

The growing popularity of focus group measurements can be traced to any one of four factors: (1) the economics associated with focus groups; (2) the speed at which data can now be collected; (3) the need to understand customer motivations; and (4) the desire to improve subsequent qualitative research activities and programs. Market researchers are…

This paper summarizes a subset of the findings of a study of digital image distribution that focused on the Museum Educational Site Licensing (MESL) project--the first large-scale multi-institutional project to explore digital delivery of art images and accompanying text/metadata from disparate sources. This Mellon Foundation-sponsored study…

This report presents the results of a survey of Digital Library Federation members that examined the kinds of assessments they were conducting, what they did with the results, and what worked well or not so well. The first section of the report is an introduction that describes the report structure and summarizes challenges in assessment. The…

How people treat each other in their daily interactions seems to be profoundly important and even central to the definition of a "civilized" society. This nationwide survey examined what Americans are thinking about courtesy, manners, rudeness, and respect. Data were gathered through a random sample telephone survey of 2,013 adults…

Describes three techniques for evaluating educational media: questionnaires, continuous reaction measures, and focus group interviews. Purposes of media evaluation are identified as finding out audience reaction and developing effective methods to use media in teaching. (Author/JJD)

Surveys and focus groups involving students from high schools with condom availability programs assessed health risk behaviors and perceptions of school environment, program effectiveness, and program improvement. Students supported such programs. Students worried about privacy when obtaining condoms, recommending private locations for accessing…

Describes the BOCES (Board of Cooperative Educational Services) communications network in upstate New York, highlighting the system's contribution to building community support for public schools via focus groups, press relations, printed and video newsletters to targeted audiences, and the information superhighway. Guidelines for creating and…

Studied the effectiveness of a teacher training approach in which preservice mathematics teachers conduct and analyze one-to-one mathematics assessment interviews with primary-aged children. Findings from interviews with five teachers and a focus group of six indicate teachers are more aware of the strategies children use including their variety…