Racism has not been eradicated in U.S. schools, even though many educators do not view it as a major deterrent to the learning of minority students. Overt racism among students, racism demonstrated in the ignorance of teachers and administrators, and racism revealed in the internal struggles of students are common in today's schools. This book…

The California Master Plan for Higher Education charges the state's community colleges with providing general education for transfer, vocational training, and basic skills instruction to state residents. In response to concerns over low transfer rates, particularly for students from historically underrepresented groups, the Academic Senate for the…

Linking teacher treatment to student impact is not as straightforward as it may seem initially. The difficulties in measuring the impact on students are illustrated in this discussion of the Ohio Statewide Systemic Initiative (SSI). Since the inception of the SSI, the external evaluators had planned to use data from the state's proficiency tests…

A pilot study to investigate the use of concept mapping for assessment purposes was conducted during the spring of 1996. Thirteen teachers from a random sample of science teachers affiliated with the Iowa-Scope, Sequence, and Coordination Project and 12 other teachers affiliated with the project participated in the concept mapping study. Student…

A pilot project tested and evaluated teleconferencing as a medium for training engineering teaching assistants in technical writing. The teleconference, which linked 15 participants in the engineering departments and writing centers of the University of South Carolina and Ohio State University, also included a training session on the use of genre…

The New Standards Project conducted a pilot test of a series of performance-based assessment tasks in mathematics and English language arts at Grades 4 and 8 in the spring of 1993. This paper reports the results of a series of generalizability analyses conducted for a subset of the 1993 pilot study data in mathematics. Generalizability analyses…

Summer Fun in the City was a pilot inclusion project of the Council for Retarded Citizens of Jefferson County, Kentucky. It was a 2-week recreational educational program for students, ages 7 to 14, with diverse abilities and disabilities. One component of the program was the use of computers, with children using LogoWriter as their tool. The…

The Achip Pilot Project was implemented in six Detroit (Michigan) public schools during the 1997-98 school year. The Achip is a small hand-held device with a computer chip that allows students to access information about their subject matter. Teachers can develop this information by creating exercises that are in alignment with their lesson plans…

This paper describes the process of creating, redesigning, and piloting a World Wide Web-based faculty development workshop. The workshop, originally presented in a traditional setting, was created to foster reflective thought about teaching philosophies and practice. Moving the workshop from a traditional classroom-like setting to a Web-based…

Using data from a pilot test of science and math from students in 30 high schools, item difficulties were estimated with a one-parameter model (partial-credit model for the multi-point items). Some items were multiple-choice items, and others were constructed-response items (open-ended). Four sets of estimates were obtained: estimates for males…

A benchmark program of the Rochester City School District's School-to-Work Transition Initiative created the Certificate of Employability (COE), a supplement to the high school diploma. It verified what students knew through assessment of their academic, citizenship, and attendance records and applied learning skills. In Year 1 (1996-97), the…

This document evaluates a pilot project in Wake County (North Carolina) to improve the achievement of at-risk black male students in grades 6-8 by linking them with supportive black adult-male role models from both the school and the community. The project is designed to overcome the following developmental barriers: (1) lack of a male role model;…

This document presents effectiveness charts that demonstrate the impact of various programs of the Austin (Texas) Independent School District (AISD) on strategic objectives of the district and executive summaries of all reports produced by the AISD's Office of Research and Evaluation in 1990-91. The programs described in the effectiveness charts…

This paper reports the results of a pilot study of the routine daily interactions of elementary school teachers. The study was undertaken to identify a method that can be used to study interaction patterns for a large sample of teachers. Specific questions were whether teachers would consistently record and self-report their daily interactions,…

A study examined the pilot year of the Computers in Early Literacy (CIEL) program, a multi-year project aimed at developing and assessing various strategies for improving the literacy development of children in kindergarten and the first grade. Subjects, 25 kindergarten and 22 first-grade students in a midwestern primary school, received three…