Thomas Jefferson recognized the value of reason and scientific experimentation in the eighteenth century. This chapter extends the idea in contemporary ways to standards that may be used to judge the ethical propriety of randomized trials and the dependability of evidence on effects of social interventions.

Purpose: This article is intended to demonstrate that adapted conversation analysis (CA) and speech act analysis (SAA) may be applied by speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to (a) identify communicative competencies in nonspeaking children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), especially during particularly successful interactions, and (b) identify…

Increasingly, government, foundations, and others are asking community-based organizations for more evaluation information. Although the demand for this information may be increasing, the field knows very little about the way organizations are responding to this demand. Using data collected from interviews and a mail survey of community-based…

The magnitude of the cultivation effect for perceptual estimates of social reality has been shown to be affected by a number of contextual factors such as source priming and motivation to process information during judgment construction, and these contextual factors have been linked to the use of heuristic processing strategies when constructing…

Principals are anxious to determine which strategies, programs, and other factors contribute to increasing the achievement of English Language Learners (ELLs) so that all students in their schools can experience success. This study investigates the practices, strategies, knowledge, and expectations of an elementary principal that contribute to…

In this comprehensive effort to study Indian education policies, the report categorizes the policies of five Northwest Region states based on 13 key policies identified in the literature and describes the legal methods used to adopt them, such as statutes, regulations, and executive orders. The study found that six of the key policies had been…

College and career readiness has become a unifying principle for education reform leaders across the country. A majority of states have made it a top policy priority, with an increasing number of national foundations and education reform advocates supporting this work. To help state leaders build strategies for sustaining their education agendas…

This technical report documents the procedures used to collect and summarize data from the 2005 High School Transcript Study (HSTS 2005). The transcript studies serve as a barometer for changes in high school graduates' course-taking patterns; these patterns provide information about the rigor of high school curricula followed across the nation.…

"Partnerships for College Access and Success: A Technical Assistance Guide, Toolkit and Resource Guide" reflects lessons learned from four years of planning, implementation and evaluation work through the Partnerships for College Access and Success (PCAS) initiative. It is the result of the collaboration between AED (Academy for Educational…

In 2008 the Council of Australian Government (COAG), which comprises the Prime Minister, State Premiers and Territory Chief Ministers, agreed to a new reform agenda to ensure that all Australian school students acquire the knowledge and skills to participate effectively in society and employment in a globalised economy. In order to advance its…

This article highlights various literature covering a broad range of topics that are of interest to public services librarians, from collections and user services to one's own research and professional development. Although addressing many topics, these authors have all used or advocate for solid research methods and data analysis in their works,…

Over the last decade the power of states to develop more effective policies and programs to improve the well-being of children has been substantially strengthened by the increasing availability of high quality child well-being indicator data at the state level. Much of these data have been developed by or under the guidance of federal statistical…

Linking teacher practice to pupil outcomes has proven challenging for teacher educators. Methodological problems occur when linking individual teacher actions with subsequent pupil performance, including substantial intervening variables, questions about appropriate measures of student learning, issues regarding the lack of test standardization…

This issue brief outlines the immediate need for more accurate dropout and graduation data, while providing a snapshot of work currently underway. By drawing on two prominent methods for calculating graduation rates: the National Governors Association's endorsed longitudinal approach and the Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate (AFGR), this brief…

This manual has been produced to familiarize data users with the procedures followed for data collection and processing for the base year through second follow-up of the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002). It also provides the necessary documentation for use of the data files, as they appear on the ELS:2002 base-year to second…