This resource is part of a series of reports about challenges facing statewide science assessments and innovative solutions states are enacting to meet those challenges. Deciding to implement a system of assessments is a critical step toward ensuring that all students are getting the high-quality science education they need--but it is also…

The East Durham Children's Initiative (EDCI), a partnership among local government, nonprofit, faith, and school organizations, is focusing on the community's most promising resource--its children--in order to restore the city to the thriving African-American middle-class community it was throughout much of the mid-20th century. Since 2008, EDCI…

Many companies struggle with the question of when to take a manual training process online. For most, the internal conflict comes from a belief that the course development costs will be astronomical, making the process cost-prohibitive. However, the facilities expense and that of hiring qualified professors, combined with the rising trend of busy…

Program budgeting is an effective tool in helping school administrators and faculty to draw up budgets which reflect their own needs and those of their clients. The "systems approach" can be used to draw up a program budget systematically. Part I outlines systems concepts and the systems approach as they can be applied to education. Also, the…

This paper discusses the issue of accountability, educational relevance, and institutional effectiveness, and outlines the development of an educational plan, at Florida's Tampa College, designed to be more responsive to community expectations. First examined are the external and internal pressures, or demands, on the decision-making process in…

Context and input measures offer potential for vocational education program evaluation. Problems of measurement in context evaluation are primarily related to decisions on the appropriateness of data and how data should be interpreted. When program goals have been established, input evaluation is used to determine how available resources can be…

Many educational administrators are skeptical of school district attempts to use the planning-programing-budgeting systems (PPBS) tool. This skepticism seems, in large part, to be the result of two factors: (1) A general lack of understanding of the concrete operational steps involved in the implementation of PPBS, and (2) a feeling that the…

The Communication Program of the Far West Laboratory for Educational Research and Development is creating a self-contained training package on Instructional Planning for administrators, teachers, and others who plan, select, manage, and evaluate instructional programs. The training package consists of three sequential units: Problem Analysis, Goal…

The Portland Public Schools have developed a model to evaluate support services of the system. Services rendered are defined by goal statements and evaluated by recipients of the services. A computer-based system maintains the service goals of each support unit, selects goals, prepares an appropriate questionnaire for each of 66 different groups…

Interest in the Planning, Programming, Budgeting System (PPBS) has waned over the last five years for several reasons. Early rhetoric about PPBS obscured its true character and promised more than it could deliver. Initially, few had the competencies needed to implement it. It is often wrongly believed to be solely a budgeting system. Finally,…

The Chipley Project was initiated to ascertain if PPBS procedures developed in establishing a private school mathematics curriculum could be applied to a public school social studies curriculum. This document reports the experiences of the Chipley Middle School teachers involved in the project. The project focused primarily on creating,…

Article presented some observations on moral education and autonomy with reference to the Schools Council Moral Education Project 'Lifeline'. (Editor/RK)

The planning, programming, budgeting system (PPBS) is an instrument to help policy-makers assign priorities and allocate resources. It does not seek to computerize what is essentially a political process, nor is it intended that the statisticians and cost accountants take over functions that properly belong to the political decision-maker. PPBS is…

This paper on identifying education outcomes for students with disabilities proposes a framework for applying an outcome-based approach throughout the education system, by looking at the needs of the three major levels of the system (local, state, and national); defining different uses for the term "outcome" in order to achieve consensus…

The Multiattribute Utility Model combines subjective goal definition with objective data analysis. Goals are defined, ranked, and weighted. Subjective opinions about their attainment are assigned against decision alternatives considered by the school. Bayesian analysis of data enables revision of prior opinions about the realization of goals…