Kansas Association of School Boards (KASB) staff created an index of educational outcomes to compare results from state to state. This report is an analysis of that study. A list of the overall rankings is included on the back page of this report. The index is based on a combination of objective qualitative measures. The data comes from national…

Exit interviews of university graduating seniors have been used to a very limited extent when evaluating academic programs. It is our belief that developing and implementing an exit interview plan stimulates faculty dialog and improves ongoing feedback for department program assessment. From 2001 to 2007, the Accounting Department at Towson…

No Child Left Behind requires school districts to demonstrate adequate yearly progress in mathematics for all students, including the sub-population of disabled students. Given that more than 200 Ohio school districts have implemented Everyday Mathematics (EM) to achieve this mandate, districts need to know if this standards-based program meets…

In an era of high-stakes accountability, school leaders often face contradictory pressures as they strive to improve student performance. They must meet the federal mandate of NCLB for student achievement; at the same time, many believe that NCLB constrains their professional judgment about how to best teach and assess students in the context of…

This document is a one-page summary of "The Condition of Education 2009". "The Condition of Education" is a congressionally mandated report that provides an annual portrait of education in the United States. The 46 indicators included in this year's report cover all aspects of education, from early childhood through…

Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) data from one rural school system covering four groups of children for a consecutive three year period was used to study the impact of transient students entering the school system. The analysis compared native children (those on roll since the first year) with transient children added to or deleted…

The Careers Project is a study of the preparation all students in public middle and high schools receive to explore career options and the relationship between that preparation and California's state and regional economies. The California Research Bureau (CRB) undertook this research at the request of a bipartisan group of members of the…

Every child deserves a great school. When kids fail or schools fail, parents must engage and help restore them to the path of success. That assistance is especially called-for during a process called "Restructuring"--a status in federal law that requires schools to make major changes due to dreadful student test scores year-after-year.…

Value-added indicators are now a central part of school accountability in England, and value-added information is routinely used in school improvement at both the national and the local levels. This article describes the value-added models that are being used in the academic year 2007-8 by schools, parents, school inspectors, and other…

Across the nation, schools increasingly are tapping into a vast resource pool--retired educators. The potential effects of the retirement boom--baby boomers reaching retirement age--have been well documented. An April 2009 "New York Times" article estimates that by 2013, more than one-third of the nation's 3.2 million teachers could…

Because schools are held accountable for the academic performance of all students, it is important to focus on academics and the need for effective teaching practices. Adequate yearly progress, a method of accountability that is part of the No Child Left Behind Act (2001), profoundly affects the education of students who have emotional and…

This article discusses the quality assurance policy of doctoral studies implemented in Lithuania and its probable outcomes are forecasted. In scientific literature the quality of education is commonly defined as a holistic phenomenon composed of the quality of initial conditions, quality of process and quality of outputs. The accomplished document…

This article critically explores how a new form of European Union (EU) governance--the open method of coordination (OMC)--impinges on education policies. The first part discusses three key characteristics of the OMC, in particular its flexibility, reflexivity and reliance on the techniques of new public management. It also outlines briefly why the…

The paper intends to contribute to the debate on ranking and league tables by adopting a critical approach to ranking methodologies from the point of view of a university benchmarking exercise. The absence of a strict benchmarking exercise in the ranking process has been, in the opinion of the author, one of the major problems encountered in the…

The purpose of this study was to examine the concurrent criterion-related (or convergent) validity of first grade measures from the "Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills" (DIBELS; Good & Kaminski, 2002). The DIBELS subtests of Phoneme Segmentation Fluency, Nonsense Word Fluency, Oral Reading Fluency, Retell Fluency, and…