A longitudinal study was conducted at William Rainey Harper College (WRHC), in Illinois, to observe the performance and achievement of students entering the college each fall from 1967 through 1986. Academic and personal data from transcripts were analyzed for randomly selected samples of 200 full- and 200 part-time students from each fall's…

The relationship between declining scores on national standardized tests and grade inflation is explored. Grade inflation refers to the indicated measure of evaluation of student performance having higher placement than is usual based on the performances. Data for this study were taken from the American College Testing (ACT) Program Class Profile…

A national survey of electronic data processing (EDP) skills and training needs involved 16 representative firms that employed EDP staff. Separate semi-structured interview schedules were used to interview 266 job holders and 63 managers with responsibility for EDP staff and computing systems. Findings indicated 67 percent of EDP staff had not…

This report summarizes the results of a national survey of U.S. elementary and secondary schools, conducted during the 1982-83 school year, which focused on the schools' instructional use of microcomputers, including use both as a means of instruction and as an object of instruction. Specific topic areas covered include: the number of…

Two activities were undertaken for this examination of the growing potential of school library media programs to promote the development of higher levels of information literacy in college-bound students. First, visits were made to 30 high schools in Massachusetts which differed in their library programs as well as in a wide range of quantitative…

Demographic and economic characteristics of Spanish Americans in North Dakota in 1980 are presented, using data from the Bureau of the Census. Statistics show 3,902 Spanish Americans were living in North Dakota (0.6% of the state's population): 59.4% were Mexican; 6.3% Puerto Rican, 1.5% Cuban, and 32.8% of other Spanish descent, with more males…

Fall 1985 data on enrollments, student characteristics, and personnel at Washington's community colleges are provided in this report and contrasted with historical data for fall quarters 1980 through 1984. Report highlights are presented, indicating: (1) in fall 1985, the Washington community college system served 153,460 students, 130,498 of whom…

This third of three volumes reports on analytic procedures conducted to address various aspects of the scalar properties of the Device Effectiveness Forecasting Technique (DEFT). DEFT, a series of microcomputer programs applied to data gathered from rating scales, is used to evaluate simulator devices used in U.S. Army weapons training. The…

Guilford Technical Community College (GTCC) received a grant to establish a centralized unit for job development, placement, and data monitoring that could serve as a model for the North Carolina Community College System. The first goal of the project was to establish a centralized method for collecting, recording, and maintaining job placement…

In an attempt to correlate effective school practices with actual observed student achievement, a survey instrument concerning principal leadership and school climate was distributed to classroom teachers in the Oklahoma City Public Schools. Responses by more than half of the teachers yielded 1,294 usable questionnaires representing all 94 schools…

Greater knowledge about the practical application of Rasch technology can help in avoiding misapplications and confusions in testing programs. Equal interval curriculum-based scaling makes possible the following improvements in measuring basic skills achievement by enabling testing programs to: (1) individualize the difficulty level of…

The main purpose of this 8-month study was to determine whether significant differences in student learning and attitudes occur as a result of the use of word processors, but curriculum changes, inservice teacher requirements, obstacles to incorporating word processing into language arts programs, effective teaching strategies, and effective…

Some ninth-grade students from three Knoxville City high schools have continuously performed substantially less well than those from other city schools in the Tennessee State proficiency tests. A task force developed a plan to work with grade 8 in the middle schools and grade 9 in the high schools to prepare students to perform better on state…

To help make school districts more accountable without resorting to minimum competency testing, the Minnesota legislature in 1976 passed a law requiring the state's 434 districts to prepare annual planning and evaluation reports (PERs). The PER law obliges districts to develop educational policies and review them annually; create an instructional…

In this set of three booklets on simplifying data, primary grade students learn how to round off data and to find the median and average from sets of data. The major emphasis in all Unified Sciences and Mathematics for Elementary Schools (USMES) units is on open-ended, long-range investigations of real problems. In most instances students learn…