This is the 9th annual report on conditions affecting the Racine Unified School District RUSD). Over the past decade, the conditions affecting the district as well as the school outcomes have changed in some ways and remained stable in others. This analysis compares RUSD to nine peer school districts and the state of Wisconsin. RUSD peer…

The study described in this paper outlines an attempt to explore those factors that contribute to learning performance improvement in laboratory instruction. As a case study, the educational methodology involved in a basic microcontroller course was analyzed. Traditional lab sessions based on the control of peripherals with low interactivity have…

This study uses a production function approach to identify the impact of student, parent, teacher, and school policy variables on student performance as measured by test scores. Our statistical analysis is conducted in a comparative institutional context that includes government, private, and non-governmental organization schools. We find that, at…

Project Success (PS) at California's Grossmont College provides students with concurrent enrollment in linked courses, such as College Reading and English Fundamentals, to provide an environment of complementary learning. To determine the effectiveness of the program, a study was undertaken to compare the demographics, performance, and persistence…

Noting that patterns of childrearing are highly variable across the human species, this book explores the developmental processes of infancy over a wide range of cultural and social environments. By presenting multiple alternative examples of the context of infant development, the book attempts to stimulate continued discussion on the ways in…

Part of a series from the Child Care Law Center, this issue of "Working for Change" discusses the need for quality, affordable child care as a support for working parents trying to break out of welfare dependency. This report details the current realities of poor parents who struggle to find and pay for child care while they work and…

A study was conducted to generate a profile of the movement of State University of New York (SUNY) two-year college students to four-year institutions. In addition, out-of-state and in-state independent institutions, identified as frequent recipients of transfers from SUNY two-year colleges, were surveyed to determine the types of transferee data…

Focussing specifically on trends in student ethnicity at North Seattle Community College (NSCC), in Washington, the three sections of this report present data on enrollment, planned length of stay and attrition rates, and graduation rates, by ethnic group. Report highlights include the following: (1) between 1980 and 1992, enrollment among…

States have created "alternate" routes to teacher certification. Comparison of alternate and college-based programs reveals clear trends in recruitment but a mixed picture regarding development of expertise. Alternate certification represents a radical departure from the current norm of teacher preparation. Several factors have led to…

This book presents international perspectives on access and participation of adults in higher education in selected European countries. The book begins with an introduction by Pat Davies and includes papers detailing and providing examples of practices and policies of higher educational institutions regarding adult students in the following…

The scope and effects of employer-sponsored training in the United States were examined to determine the following: how economic and technological change interact with employers' responses to the new environment's demands; how employer-sponsored training affects the functional distribution of educational attainment, productivity, and earnings; and…

A recent study proposed a rational for investigating the effects of mediating tasks upon a summary writing activity for tertiary-level students using English as an educational medium. The tasks in this study involved a group discussion or a reading comprehension exercise, with a third condition providing for immediate access to the text and…

A descriptive evaluation is presented that considers several distance-education courses in Nevada, all of which use compressed video. The performances and attitudes of distance-education students are compared in general terms with those of students in regular classes. Programs evaluated in this preliminary investigation include nursing courses…

A study investigated the communication strategies used by students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in electronic mail interactions with native speakers of English. Subjects were 22 university students in Taiwan paired with a like number of pre-service EFL teacher trainees in the United States. The discourse of 87 e-mail entries by the…

Since educational statistics, which are relatively easy to obtain, can only attempt to measure "quality," this paper asks how quality in higher education is assessed and how educational rankings, which are defined as benchmarks or attempts to measure, contribute to this process. The paper notes that while attempts to rank institutions of…