The "Child Care Bulletin" is published quarterly and includes practical, informative articles based on current literature regarding topics important to policy-makers, child care providers, and parents. The Bulletin includes short articles, tips sheets, policy updates, interviews with leaders in the child care field, information from child…

The burgeoning field of Out-of-School Time provides academic and social services to K-12 students during the time that they are not in school. Hundreds of service providers offer a range of programs that target various student populations. Many tools exist to measure program performance, but no uniform evaluation methods exist to inform funders…

This article considers some patterns of ranking higher education institutions which are used in the Russian Federation to reveal strengths and weaknesses in meeting the national individual, societal and state-related needs, as well as those of the international academic community concerning relevant information on Russian higher education…

Two years after the first low-cost radio-frequency audience response system using clickers was introduced for college classrooms, at least six different systems are on the market. Their features and user-friendliness are evolving rapidly, driven by competition and improving technology. The proliferation of different systems is putting pressure on…

Quality assurance in medical education is a complex matter. Institutions and external critics of accreditation processes often question the objectivity of peer judgements. Members of accreditation panels similarly often feel at a loss for a lack of mechanisms to help them arrive at a collective assessment of the performance of an institution. In…

Introduction: Heightened concerns about industry influence on continuing medical education (CME) have prompted tighter controls on the management of commercial funding and conflict of interest. As a result, CME providers must closely monitor their activities and intervene if bias or noncompliance with accreditation standards is likely. Potential…

Background/Context: The nationwide preoccupation with accountability continues to grow, with teacher credentialing programs facing growing scrutiny through state-mandated accountability systems. In response to Senate Bill 2042 passed by the California state legislature in 1998, the California Commission for Teacher Credentialing (CCTC) established…

Education in the United States is becoming increasingly standardized, with the standards being initiated at the national level and then trickling down to the state level and finally the local level. Yet, this top-down approach to educational standards carries with it significant limitations, such as loss of local autonomy and restrictions on the…

The Bookmark standard-setting procedure was developed to address the perceived problems with the most popular method for setting cut-scores: the Angoff procedure (Angoff, 1971). The purposes of this article are to review the Bookmark procedure and evaluate it in terms of Berk's (1986) criteria for evaluating cut-score setting methods. The…

Classification "rules" in expert and everyday discourse are usually deficient by formal standards, lacking explicit decision procedures and precise terms. The authors argue that a central function of such weak rules is to focus on perceptual learning rather than to provide definitions. In 5 experiments, transfer following learning of family…

In 2001, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) began the process of redesigning the U.S. naturalization tests due to concerns that the current testing procedure may not be sufficiently uniform, and that the test content may not be appropriate. A National Research Council committee issued recommendations, based largely on the…

Traditionally, "education through research" is understood to be a main characteristic of education at the university. In this article we will explore how "education through research" is argued to be of major importance for the European knowledge society, how there is still a reference to the idea of "Bildung" or…

The increase in litigation by students who are dissatisfied with their assessment, and to a lesser extent the time and monetary costs of student appeals makes it imperative that institutions adopt a robust assessment strategy. The concern of consumers with respect to professional services offered by students after graduation is also an issue. This…

This article features the Family Child Care Home Education Network (FCCHEN), a groundbreaking program operated by the Riverside County Office of Education's Division of Children and Family Services. The FCCHEN is a network of family child care homes located throughout the Coachella Valley that receive funding for subsidized child care through an…

New Jersey leaders have launched a campaign to build support for boosting high school rigor, but some are worried that the effort could produce a higher dropout rate as the state phases out an alternative exam used by nearly 15 percent of its students. Part of the state's bid to raise expectations involves scrapping the Special Review Assessment,…