The Education Commission of the States (ECS) Task Force on Education for Economic Growth was established in 1982 and is made up of governors, business and industry leaders, labor representatives, members of the technical community, and educators. The task force has surveyed 40 states and found programs and activities enhancing economic growth.…

The evaluation of teacher inservice education programs is discussed. Evaluation of an inservice program is aimed at answering questions about the program's effectiveness and providing a description of the impact the experience has on the participants. Curriculum evaluation should be concerned with four kinds of decisions: (1) planning; (2)…

Part of an investigation of the effectiveness of Education Consolidation and Improvement Act (ECIA) Chapter 1 reading programs, this document reports on a study of 699 second and fourth grade students in Chapter 1 programs in Iowa. An introduction notes that the study was conducted to discover instructional characteristics that affect student…

A study examined the relationship between Collegiate Assessment of Academic Proficiency (CAAP) critical thinking test scores and the extent to which students met core general education course requirements at Northeast Missouri State University (NMSU). Data used in the study were collected in required sophomore examinations as part of an…

This document is the report of a commission appointed by the Governor of New Jersey to examine the status of Eastern European studies in the state's public schools. The commission surveyed the state's secondary schools and found that the Eastern European region outside of Russia was given very little attention. As its main focus, the commission…

A project was conducted to develop a curriculum in snowmobile repair and to determine if that curriculum was appropriate for snowmobile training programs in secondary schools throughout the state of Alaska. The completed curriculum was distributed by the Alaska Department of Education to snowmobile training personnel in the state. A stratified…

The ways in which a rating scale developed for problem-based medical curricula provides information that is useful in the area of curriculum reform were demonstrated in a study involving 95 first-year medical students at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec (Canada). The rating scale, based on the theory of problem-based learning of W. H.…

The design and evaluation of a rating scale for program evaluation in problem-based medical curricula are described. The design process was guided by a theory of how students learn in problem-based learning as modeled by W. H. Gijselaers and H. G. Schmidt (1988). The rating scale was used in an evaluation of a new problem-based, community-oriented…

In 1987, a task force was established to recommend appropriate actions to the North Carolina community college system for the regular review of curriculum instructional programs. The task force was to give particular attention to the proper roles of the colleges and the State Board of Community Colleges, the impact of regional accreditation…

The operational preparations for the Dutch national assessment program in education started in 1986. The program's aim is to periodically describe the contents of the curriculum in use and the attainment of 8-year-old and 11-year-old students on a national basis by means of surveys. In this paper some of the guiding principles in instrument…

If present trends in family life and education continue into the next decade, most children under five will spend substantial proportions of their early years in various types of early childhood programs, most five- to six-year-olds will attend all-day kindergarten, and during their elementary school years they will spend much of their time before…

This two-volume report on the progress of the Instructional Program in Reading/Language Arts (IPR/LA) in the Montgomery County, Maryland schools presents a brief overview of the study design, methodology, findings, recommendations, background data, and statistical analysis tables. Volume I of the report begins with an Executive Summary of the…

Curricular changes among 20 public comprehensive high schools in California from 1982-83 to 1984-85 were analyzed. This report focuses primarily on changes in advanced placement courses in sample schools; it is accompanied by a discussion of policy implications and tables of demographic and course section data. The researchers discovered a…

This report, commissioned by the Minister of Education of Alberta, reviews the programs of study and instructional materials used in four groups of approved private schools: schools using the Accelerated Christian Education curriculum; schools using the Alpha Omega program; Mennonite parochial schools; and Seventh Day Adventist schools. The review…

This document contains four sections which deal with various aspects of international environmental education. Section 1 includes papers that describe environmental education projects and programs in South America, Europe, India, Scotland, the Arab states, and the Sudan. An additional article in this chapter compares the environmental education…