Provides ten suggestions to help in choosing and using an outside evaluator. (IRT)

This report serves as a quick reference guide for elected officials to compare key education policies and data in their states to the rest of the nation. The first section highlights major state policies for all 50 states in both table and chart formats (see Summary Charts ). The second section provides key state data, such as per-student spending…

The "Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act of 2006 (Perkins IV)" continues a longstanding federal investment in career and technical education (CTE) through grants to states and subgrants to local entities such as local education agencies (LEAs) and institutions of higher education (IHEs). As the fourth reauthorization of a…

A new national survey of recent public high school graduates shows that approximately 50% of them report gaps in preparation for life after high school. Recent grads say they would have worked harder if they had fully understood the challenges that lay ahead. The research suggests that providing real academic challenge for high school students and…

As a group, readers' advisory (RA) librarians are a chatty bunch when it comes to what they are reading. They share book ideas with their friends and families. The adoption of online RA conversation forms is helping to extend these opportunities even further and offers a fascinating testing ground for RA work. Librarians have found that offering…

Friendship lies at the very heart of the middle school experience. Here are books to help students navigate those waters, recognize what (and who) has value, and determine what kind of friend they want to be.

The purpose of this study was to illustrate the use of propensity scores for creating comparison groups, partially controlling for pretreatment course selection bias, and estimating the treatment effects of selected courses on the development of moral reasoning in undergraduate students. Specifically, we used a sample of convenience for comparing…

This paper defines affirmative action in the context of hiring practices in educational institutions and the public sector. It discusses discrimination, gender, equality, and conservative resistance to diversity programs. Cases are cited to illustrate the legal dilemmas of diversity in public and educational institutions. The monograph concludes…

As baby boomers reach retirement age, demographic pressures on public programs may cause policy makers to cut benefits and encourage employment at later ages. But how much demand exists for older workers? This paper reports on a field experiment to determine hiring conditions for older women in entry-level jobs in two cities. A younger worker is…

Judge Harry T. Roman, an electrical engineer and inventor himself, has selected the best entries in the 2007-2008 "Tech Directions" Inventors Award Competition. This year's challenge called for students to devise new uses for the common Ping-Pong ball. Of the results, the judge notes "The ideas submitted were most interesting, with a high number…

This study was designed to analyze the hiring criteria of principals in Iowa to determine whether districts were seeking the characteristics of second-order change in their principals. Using content analysis, hiring criteria provided by districts were coded to identify those that described second-order change responsibilities per Mid-continent…

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB, 2002) has produced an explosion of interest in the use of assessment to measure and improve student learning. Initially focused on annual state tests, educators quickly learned that results came too little and too late to identify students who were falling behind. At the same time, evidence from the…

This study examined the English, mathematics, and natural sciences course work taken by students in their first year of college. Four-year postsecondary institutions (k = 110) provided first-year performance data for the first-time, first-year students who began college in the fall of 2006. As in previous research, composition is the most commonly…

This report on a statewide telephone survey describes child care use in Minnesota among households with children 12 and younger. Minnesota has an estimated 908,000 children ages 12 and younger; 24 percent are ages 0 to 2, 24 percent ages 3 to 5, 30 percent ages 6 to 9 and 23 percent ages 10 to 12. Of the nearly 500,000 households with one or more…