This discussion constructs a survey data quality strategy for institutional researchers in higher education in light of total survey error theory. It starts with describing the characteristics of institutional research and identifying the gaps in literature regarding survey data quality issues in institutional research and then introduces the…

This issue of "Focal Point" explores how the increasing emphasis on using evidence-based practices and a "system of care" approach is driving changes in jobs and roles related to children's mental health. Articles in the issue describe how agencies and providers of services and supports have responded to these changes by creating new types of…

Effective practices typically evolve over a long period in high-functioning, fully engaged systems. Historically, schools have been confronted with project after project, program after program, initiative after initiative. Many of these aim at addressing learning, behavior, and emotional problems and making schools safe and drug free. This issue…

College grades play important educational and social roles (Milton, Pollio, and Eison, 1986; Walvoord and Anderson, 1998). What is not well understood are the types of problems that exist in college grading practices. Conversations about grade inflation in higher education are often based on sparse anecdotal evidence and charged with value…

Considerable controversy surrounds discussion of a mayor's role in public education. From a policy perspective, however, it is essential that every mayor help improve schools. This issue of the quarterly newsletter of the Center for Mental Health in Schools includes the following features and regular segments: (1) Open letter to the Mayor--A…

Enrollment forecasting is the central component of effective budget and program planning. The integrated enrollment forecast model is developed to achieve a better understanding of the variables affecting student enrollment and, ultimately, to perform accurate forecasts. The transfer function model of the autoregressive integrated moving average…

Service-learning courses focus on both service experience and academic learning. Academic content is covered in both the classroom and the service experience, and the service experiences are reflected upon and processed in the classroom. Based on educational values, potential outcomes can be classified as development of personal competence,…

Beginners in many disciplines learn that correlation never proves causation, but sometimes, even in public health, correlation, mistaken for causation, becomes the basis for policy and great expenditures of public and private money. "True experiments" with random assignment to experimental and control groups hold a special place in the…