Character education, the instruction of core ethical values and cultivation of good conduct in the classroom, is increasingly being incorporated in public school curricula across the country. Over the last few years, schools in 48 states have introduced programs in character education as a means to nurture moral behavior among the youth. Public…

Mergers have been a frequent phenomenon in higher education in the last quarter century. The conventional wisdom is that mergers are undertaken mainly for economic reasons, either to expand markets or to reduce costs. About four out of five college or university mergers survive. In the for-profit sector the comparable rate is closer to two out of…

The author reviews the evolution of the Circulation Department at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) Library and Information Center from 2001 to the present. It is shown how a traditional circulation department with poor customer relations transformed itself by adopting innovative policies and services leading to improved customer…

This paper focuses on how an academic library managed changes in services and space to meet customer needs for streamlined services, increasing efficiency for students, faculty and staff in finding, analyzing, sharing, and producing knowledge. The Ohio State University's John A. Prior Health Sciences Library (PHSL) has merged its circulation and…

External inefficiency in education--inequity between the characteristics of graduates and the job market--is a problem in Indonesia and many other countries. Job markets at the junior secondary level are very tight in Indonesia with low levels of unemployment at all ages, short job-search times, and high real rates of return. Unemployment,…

The East School Assistance Center (ESAC) is an organizational unit of Toledo Public Schools that provides psychological and special-education services to the East Toledo region of the district. This paper presents findings of a study that evaluated the quality and efficiency of the center's services. The delivery model features a regional location…

Recent national reports reinforce the growing perception that small schools are good schools. This may seem a revolution or the latest fad in schooling; however, issues of size cannot be captured in universal guidelines. This digest discusses the history of school size dilemmas to demonstrate why this is so. The earliest research literature on…

The New York City Board of Education's Division of School Facilities (DSF) is responsible for the repairs and maintenance of all public schools and other board facilities. This report contains findings of an audit conducted by the Office of the State Comptroller of the DSF's Repair and Maintenance Program. The audit focused on the DSF's efforts to…

Considerable interest in consolidation or reorganization of school districts derives from the perception that consolidation produces significant cost savings due to scale economies in the provision of education. This paper examines potential cost savings from consolidation of New York school districts--an initiative actively encouraged by the…

This report explores key issues in the debate about restructuring educational time to enhance student learning. Its central framework was derived from proceedings of a symposium conducted in June 1994 by the Policy Support Program of the Far West Laboratory for Educational Research and Development. Part 1 describes the developments that led to the…

This monograph examines selected issues in the design and conduct of program and project evaluation in developing countries, with a focus on the evaluation of international technical assistance programs. Chapter 1 introduces the evolving role of efficiency criteria in the evaluation of educational systems. Chapter 2 provides detail on the nature…

This paper was commissioned at the request of Kentucky's governor, who wished to ascertain whether state educational costs could be reduced by consolidating small school districts. The issue arises in the context of Kentucky's ongoing efforts to implement the Kentucky Education Reform Act of 1990 in the face of increasing state fiscal constraints.…

To determine whether or not cognitive tempo influences visual cue preferences in early readers, 65 kindergarten, first-grade, and second-grade children were tested on the Matching Familiar Figures (MFF) test and a cue selection nonsense trigram test. It was hypothesized that significant differences would be found in cue selection strategies of…

Data for this study of the role and effectiveness of state depository libraries in assuring the acquisition and distribution of state publications were collected via a two-page questionnaire containing 10 open- and closed-ended questions. This questionnaire was sent to the state documents authorities in each of the 50 states in March 1989, and…

An approach for studying faculty research productivity over time as measured by the number of scholarly articles published was developed and tested. The approach attempts to take into account the fact that both the amount of available professional journal space and the number of faculty competing for publications have changed over time by…