ED"Facts" is an initiative of the U. S. Department of Education to base education policy on reliable performance data provided by state education agencies. Among its many data items, ED"Facts" houses school-level counts of students disaggregated by state-defined student economic status, typically free and reduced-price lunch…

Investigators interested in conducting school health research face many challenges. This article focuses on an analysis of research designs and measurement issues that most frequently confront school health researchers. (Author/DF)

This counterpoint responds to Phillip Ward's commentary on a study by Gerald Biederman and others which concluded that verbal reinforcement in combination with interactive modeling strategies may produce confusion in children with language/learning difficulties. The counterpoint argues that the commentary indicates problems with semantics and with…

Qualitative research that takes into account children's views of themselves as well as their own assessments of their talents and capabilities in reading and other academic areas can enhance understandings already established in research and measured by standardized instruments. New avenues of qualitative research can prove amenable to assessing…

The promise of the stakeholder approach to evaluation lies in its potential to counter criticism that evaluation is too narrow, unrealistic in its standards for success, unfair to program staff and participants, and irrelevant to decision makers. (Author)

Findings of a study that determined the ways in which practicing administrative course developers utilize instructional design activities in their design projects are presented in this paper. A survey was administered to 30 participants in a training and development group within a large organization and mailed to 43 other practicing instructional…

In this essay, inquiry concerning school organizations is likened to a hunt and some "hunting stories" are told. The stories deal with two areas of inquiry related to pupil control. One area is concerned with the instruments that serve as operational definitions or measures in the author's pupil control research. The other was concerned with a…

Suggests that current techniques for assessing school effectiveness are based on narrow concepts of effectiveness; hide inconsistencies in findings across types of students, grades, or subjects; and do not reflect curricula. Emphasizes that school improvement plans should be based on classroom/school-centered research rather than on comparisons of…

Research in the area of the instructional leadership of the school administrator is reviewed. Weaknesses in studies of instructional leadership are grouped as methodological, measurement, and conceptual problems. These problems define an agenda for improving research in the area of instructional leadership. (SLD)

This study used species diversity indices developed in ecology as a measure of socioethnic diversity, and compared them to Coleman's Index of Segregation. The twelve indices were Simpson's Concentration Index ("ell"), Simpson's Index of Diversity, Hurlbert's Probability of Interspecific Encounter (PIE), Simpson's Probability of…

This paper argues that using intelligence as an aptitude benchmark in defining reading disability conceals unsupported assumptions about educational potential and makes it difficult to differentiate the cognitive characteristics of dyslexic children from those of other poor readers. The use of a more educationally relevant aptitude measure such as…

This document, product of a review of eighty-one final performance and evaluation reports of elementary and secondary career education projects to identify needed improvements in career education program evaluation, has four parts. Part I, a critique of common evaluation practices, covers overall evaluation designs, reporting, questionnaires and…

Reviewing their "Classroom Environment Study: Teaching for Learning" and other teaching research literature, project personnel examine the limitations of the process-product paradigm typically used in research on teaching. Topics covered include a conceptual model for teaching; preservice and inservice teacher training; appropriate…

Social studies research has told us very little in the past 30 years. There are several reasons for this state of affairs in social studies. First, inferential statistics has become much too prominent in research thinking and practice. Replication should be used by researchers to build a useful body of knowledge. A second reason for lack of…

Considers the impact of information technology (IT) on children's learning in schools with particular reference to two studies that examined the value of using IT. Discussion includes the difficulties of evaluating IT effectiveness and some explanations for the insignificant impact of IT in the studies. (13 references) (KRN)