State policymakers are increasingly focused on closing the achievement gap and preparing all students to succeed in school and in life. However, college and career readiness begins long before students enter high school or even a classroom. Differences in children's abilities appear as early as the first year of life, and research has shown that…

This hearing, which is the first of a series of hearings on the 1990 decennial census, focuses on automation activities, pretest preparations, and proposed residency rules. Gene L. Dodaro, associate director of the General Accounting Office, calls on the committee to use special purpose tests to adequately evaluate the following: (1) potential of…

Most administrators agree that school improvement and change are needed. Disagreement among administrators arises over how the improvements should be made. Total Quality Management (TQM) is a powerful tool in bringing about change and should be considered as an effective alternative in improvement efforts. The TQM approach is designed to address…

This Guide has been developed to provide a framework for decision makers, school facility managers, and the public to identify a basic set of school facilities data elements, including definitions that will meet their information needs. Chapter 1 describes the purpose, scope, and intended audience for this guide. Chapter 2 describes how to use the…

Discusses the advantages of parallel processor computers in terms of expandibility, cost, performance and reliability, and suggests that such computers be used in library automation systems as a cost effective approach to planning for the growth of information services and computer applications. (CLB)

Based in part on a list developed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for use in Afghanistan, this document presents a comprehensive checklist of items of statistical and descriptive data required for planning a national communication system. It is noted that such a system provides the vital…

Potential uses of a central registry/clearinghouse approach in the Child Support Enforcement Program (CSEP) are described in this publication. The CSEP was established in 1975 under Title IV-D of the Social Security Act in an effort to reduce federal monies spent supporting dependent children not receiving financial assistance from absent parents.…

A state educational indicator system being developed by the Pennsylvania Educational Policy Studies (PEPS) project at the University of Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) is described. The extensive database that has been established as part of the PEPS project includes thousands of variables that are descriptive of the 500 Pennsylvania school districts.…

Recognizing that the major technical direction of this decade is toward proximity of computing function to its users, the Research Libraries Group (RLG) is moving to distribute its processing capabilities. The goals of this study were to formulate an architecture for an RLG distributed system, to identify pre-existing components appropriate for…

To learn first hand how the libraries of North Carolina, especially public libraries, function in spite of budget cuts, a hearing was held in Lumberton (North Carolina) to hear the testimony of interested parties from the state and national levels and specifically from the congressional district of southeastern North Carolina. While library…

The way that the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Student Financial Assistance (OSFA) should conduct its quality assurance function of monitoring a processing contractor is described. For the following quality assurance procedures, information is provided on the goal of the procedure, activities to be measured, measures, and the role of…

A framework for monitoring quality control (QC) of processor contracts administered by the Department of Education's Office of Student Financial Assistance (OSFA) is presented and applied to the Pell Grant program. Guidelines for establishing QC measures and standards are included, and the uses of a sampling procedure in the QC system are…