This report provides Pennsylvania state legislators and educators with policy-relevant information about the distance learning needs of rural Pennsylvania school districts. Two surveys, covering rural and urban-suburban Pennsylvania school districts, examined distance learning programs and technologies currently being used and the possibility of…

For a number of years, the California community colleges have used data from annual statewide surveys conducted by the Kern Community College District and the California Community College Trustees (CCCT) for comparative faculty salary information. Both the Kern and CCCT studies rely upon the device of selecting benchmark points (such as the…

This issue paper focuses on the first of six national education goals described by President George Bush on January 31, 1990. The intent of this goal is that by the year 2000 all children in the United States will start school ready to learn and that appropriate federal and state policies will be in place. The paper is organized as follows: (1) a…

This report represents the shared vision of several hundred Idahoans of what Idaho's schools can become--not only what education can become in an ideal sense, but also what schools need to do to provide the young people of Idaho with the skills, abilities, and knowledge they will need to be fulfilled individuals, able workers, and fully…

Divided into four sections, this guide has been compiled to answer the most frequently asked questions about music education in Minnesota and to provide a consistent, uniform base of information for all schools and districts. The first section, "Curriculum and Evaluation," describes resources available to educators and administrators…

It is increasingly recognized, following the lead of J. J. Cannell, that actual gains in educational achievement may be much more modest than dramatic gains reported by many state assessments and many test publishers. An overview is presented of explanations of spurious test score gains. Focus is on determining how test-curriculum alignment and…

This document reports responses from Alaska's 54 school districts to a Department of Education survey on curriculum, instruction, and assessment. The first section provides general information about the school districts' responses in those three areas, including information on curriculum guides, graduation requirements, student assessment…

This study presents the results of a 1989 study of computers in Texas schools. Data were gathered from 65 questionnaires concerning brands currently in use, percent of computer literacy among faculty, number of computer laboratories in the school district, use of computer networking in the laboratories, and brands of computers by grade level. It…

Support services in the schools, such as guidance counseling, have been and are necessary and integral components of an ever-changing educational agenda. Guidance remains a vital responsibility of education. This study collected a variety of job-related and professional information from counseling personnel (N=147) who provided services to early…

The third Attorney General's California Student Substance Use Survey was conducted between December 1989 and March 1990. A total of 6,282 students in grades 7, 9, and 11 participated. The primary focus was the extent to which declines in the use of drugs other than alcohol observed in the 1987-88 survey persisted, and whether the decline included…

A sourcebook for 13 licensed health professions in Missouri is presented for 1980 and 1981. A brief overview of each profession is provided, along with statistical data concerning activity status, personal characteristics, practice characteristics, and place of professional education. The following professions are covered: chiropractors, dental…

The New Hampshire Technical Institute (NHTI) and the six New Hampshire Vocational-Technical Colleges (NHVTC) offer collegiate education preparing individuals for direct employment in business, industry, health, and service-related fields. At the completion of the 1982-83 academic year, 1,029 students had graduated from 44 different programs…

In 1982, the Education Commission of the States conducted an initial survey of school improvement programs to document state efforts to improve the quality of education in the public schools. Based on a new survey conducted in June and July of 1983, this paper updates the earlier survey and describes state-level school improvement activities begun…

As a baseline measurement of what is being learned about computers in California, the skills, knowledge, attitudes, and experiences of a representative sample of 17,861 high school seniors was assessed in December 1982. Developed by a committee of experts in computer technology drawn from the public school system, universities, and industry, the…

Parents generally expect public school districts to provide for their children's care and safety while they are at school. Although in the first half of the twentieth century common law tended to make school officials immune from suit, more recently public school districts, school employees, officers, and elected boards have been successfully sued…