Suggests a model of successful inservice education involving three major factors. Teachers must acquire knowledge, acquire skills or competencies, and undergo practical experiences that require application of the knowledge and skills. The implications of the model for teachers of exceptional children are particularly important. (PGD)

Effective communities are well-educated about themselves, have a better understanding of public information, talk through public issues to generate shared knowledge, appreciate the difference between public opinion and public judgment, and believe in public leadership as the key to using public power to solve community problems. (SK)

Recommendations from the Wirtz/Lapointe report, "Measuring The Quality of Education" (ED 213 769), which evaluates National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), are presented. Six educators respond to the concern that NAEP's reports and material are not widely known or as useful to educators as they should be. (CM)

Evaluation research should be viewed as the source of knowledge on two levels: (1) how evaluation studies utilize results, and (2) how the knowledge that was evaluated is utilized. The purpose of this document is to systematically examine the literature pertinent to the utilization of evaluation results. The impetus for legitimization of…

Describes the creation and objectives of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), and reviews the findings of an evaluation of the NAEP, published in "Measuring the Quality of Education," by Wirtz and Lapointe. Focuses on the role that the NAEP can play in establishing uniform, national educational standards. (GC)

Information systems are a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for improving the efficiency of educational systems. Improving the Education Management Information System must be the foundation of any long-term effort to enhance the efficiency of the Nepalese system. Three critical conditions must be met to enhance system efficiency…

Teacher educators are in a state of near paralysis concerning their program evaluations. This paralysis comes from adopting wholesale a dysfunctional evaluative point of view from the dominant educational research establishment. There is a history of overestimating the current relevance of experimental behavioral science models for the gathering…

This paper examines strategies for urban school improvement within the realm of preschool, elementary, and secondary level programs, and systemwide programs. Examples of programs in each grade level area which are operating in different parts of the country are given. The following elements are identified as common to all successful programs: (1)…

These proceedings contain reports and outlines of presentations given at a national conference that focused on organizing for dissemination collaboration in the field of vocational education. The text of a report on organizing for dissemination collaboration and the presentation outline of an address on collaboration for program improvement in the…

This paper, written by the director of the Documentation and Technical Assistance Project (DTA), reviews lessons learned from this project for enhancing problem solving capacities of urban schools, and assesses some of the reasons that the project was terminated ahead of schedule by the National Institute of Education. In the first chapter the…

Because of various flaws in their design, most research studies that have up to now examined the transition of youth to the work setting have failed to pinpoint ways of improving existing programs. Many of these design flaws (including lack of a uniform set of outcome measures, failure to routinely incorporate control groups, and failure to design…