This paper describes the design and function of Louisiana's statewide student-level database, the Student Information System (SIS). In Louisiana the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education adopted the dropout definition of the National Center for Education Statistics for use by all Louisiana public schools in the 1989-1990 school year.…

The Education Data Improvement Project of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) is described. The conceptual framework that guided its implementation is presented. The Education Data Improvement Project was designed to promote and facilitate the reform and refinement of the Center for Education Statistics (CES) national elementary and…

The process by which the Educational Resources Information Center's Clearinghouse on Tests, Measurement, and Evaluation (ERIC/TM) acquires documents and the ways in which it offers them to users are discussed. Focus is on identifying how the ERIC/TM and members of the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) can cooperate to increase…

The Task Force on Quality Control of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) was created to study the quality control procedures used for NCES publications and to determine if there are ways to improve the current procedures. Because a detailed review of the entire survey process would have been too time consuming, the Task Force…

This report documents the second-year progress of the Community College Data Base Team in their efforts to build a geographically based data system for use by college researchers and administrators. The primary purpose of the 1973-74 team effort was to expand the 1972-73 data base by adding internally generated district items, aggregated to the…

Several Federal programs and initiatives are underway to reduce crime and violence in the schools. In connection with these efforts, Congress had passed legislation requiring the National Center for Education Statistics to collect data about the seriousness and incidence of violence in elementary and secondary schools. This report presents an…

Academic institutions are becoming increasingly interested in the collection and presentation of data to support strategic planning, accreditation, and accountability needs. With an increased emphasis on campus-wide involvement and centralized data collection at some institutions, the integrity, accessibility, and interpretation of data become key…

This report documents the design, administration, and data analysis procedure of the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) for 1996. It indicates the technical decisions that were made and the rationale behind them. Detailed substantive findings are not presented in this report. These chapters provide technical information about the…

Procedures are described that were used to collect and process postsecondary school transcripts for a subsample of members of the younger (i.e. 1980 sophomore) cohort of the High School and Beyond study who attended postsecondary institutions at any time after leaving high school. Five chapters are as follows: (1) introduction (the National Center…

This handbook, which was written by researchers with expertise in Australia's technical and further education (TAFE) system, provides background information about the following: approaches to research in vocational education and training (VET); the range of methods normally used in research and their the application to VET; and procedures for…