The importance of the U.S. Census as a monitor of social change in the past decade and harbinger of social change in the future is reviewed. Throughout the history of the U.S., the census has provided both the data that drive the economy and the numbers for equitably apportioning political power. The census reflects the fact that changes in…

The U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Relations reviewed the National Academic Advisory Report Card Act of 1990 (Senate Bill 3095) to authorize the creation of a National Report Card to be published annually to measure the educational achievement of both students and schools and to establish a National Council on Educational Goals. The…

This manual is designed to familiarize data users with the procedures followed for data collection and processing of the base-year school component of the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88). A corollary objective is to provide the necessary documentation for use of the data files. The manual provides a wide range of…

The State of Iowa conducted several higher education inventory studies in an effort to identify strategies and priorities for the future. The Long Range Strategic Planning Study, the first of the studies to be undertaken, was charged with reviewing all academic programs, identifying program strengths, and making recommendations for redesigning the…

This handbook is designed to provide school decision makers with a global view of how assessment programs for home study schools are developed. Outcomes assessment (OA) is a required element for recognition by the National Home Study Council Accrediting Committee and hence for member schools. This handbook is designed to enable program developers…

Needs assessment is an activity undertaken for planning purposes. It is important to define the limits of the study and design it on a scale appropriate to the entire planning process. This paper suggests that a needs assessment be structured into two phases. In the pre-assessment phase, a conceptual framework and well-defined exploratory…

Error profiles for the Fall Enrollment Survey of the Higher Education General Information Survey (HEGIS) were developed as part of an assessment of the quality of survey data. Three statistics were of particular interest: the count of full-time equivalent students, the breakdown by race/ethnicity, and the count of unclassified students. Attention…

With increasing reliance being placed on the results of their surveys, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) recognized a need for these survey results to be valid and reliable. As part of the work of the Statistical Analysis Group in Education (SAGE), an effort was undertaken to investigate validity and reliability in survey…

Different language sample elicitation techniques may be appropriate for different linguistic phenomena and for learners at different phases of acquisition. These techniques include elicited production, manipulation of given linguistic material (sentence combining, sentence completion), intuition and grammaticality judgment tests, introspection,…

The instructional information system (IIS), a method by which instructionally relevant information can be collected, stored, processed, and reported to various users in a timely manner, has considerable potential to improve instruction. To better identify the circumstances in which the IIS will succeed, it is necessary to know more about how…

The policy papers included in this package address various facets of the topic of data-based accountability for education in California. Guy Benveniste of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Education explores the underlying issue of accountability and describes the implications of different types of accountability measures. In…

In preparation for a major research study on change in schools, a 3-month pilot study of principals in 10 schools was conducted in central Texas. The main purpose of the study was to investigate different ways to document the actions taken by the principals to facilitate implementation of innovations in their schools. In this paper, the procedures…

A study was sponsored by the Office of the Chancellor of the California Community Colleges to: (1) document and analyze the information needs of various groups (e.g., the legislature, state agencies, and community colleges) with respect to the state's community colleges and to prepare a matrix of information needs and uses; (2) inventory the…

Two major areas are recommended in the redesign of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data collection: assessment of social and communicative competence, and description of classroom processes. Social and communicative competence are important achievements of the school-age years and are heavily influenced by classroom…

This report presents data, describing mostly on-site institutional resources, from the 118 U.S. and Canadian research libraries that were members of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) during the 1986-87 fiscal year. The following information is included in the document: (1) ARL library data tables reflecting data on collections,…