A survey was conducted to investigate public library directors' use of the Federal-State Cooperative System for Public Library Data and the Public Library Data Service reports. This article highlights the uses directors made of statistics and the aspects of statistics that they found particularly useful. (Contains 51 references.) (Author/AEF)

The paper reports on aspects of an ESRC project, "The impact of Performance 'Threshold Assessment' on teachers' work" (ESRC R000239286). The paper begins by explaining the nature and technology of "Threshold Assessment," and its location nationally within the performance management system recently introduced into schools in England. We review the…

In this article, I outline how, with the appropriate mix of external requirements and internal motivation, structure and capacity, a school can promote and maintain a culture of evaluative practices, specifically data use, for continuous improvement. I draw upon qualitative data conducted in a study of an Edison Project school. The findings from…

This article reports on the central recommendation of the federal task force for a way to better handle dropout and graduation rates. Made up of 10 academics and government statisticians, the panel comprising the Task Force on Graduation, Completion, and Dropout Indicators was formed in the fall of 2003 to advise the U.S. Department of Education's…

A dual credit course is a college/university level course that is taught at a high school, by a high school teacher, in partnership with a community college (CCWD) or Oregon University System (OUS) institution. Successful completion of a dual credit course counts as credit for both high school and college. In 2005-06, about 12,000 students took…

The education and care of children is traditionally a family duty in the Hungarian culture. This is especially true for small (under 3 years) children. This is well transcribed into the social-welfare system: the child care allowance is paid for the mother for up to the second birthday of the child. Even after there is another kind of allowance…

Empirical studies addressing admission to and graduation from a doctoral program focusing on educational leadership are noticeably absent within the professional literature, and this study seeks to fill partially this void through testing specific hypotheses. Archival data were used to conduct a three group discriminant analyses where the…

The "2011 State Preschool Yearbook" is the newest edition of our annual report profiling state-funded prekindergarten programs in the United States. This latest "Yearbook" presents data on state-funded prekindergarten during the 2010-2011 school year as well as documenting a decade of progress since the first…

This report shows that Massachusetts school districts are making progress in providing instruction that is relevant to today's students--and in preparing students for the technological demands of the 21st century. A number of positive trends emerge from districts' 2004-2005 technology data. The daily use of technology in the classroom has…

This report is the tenth in a series of annual publications produced jointly by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Institute of Education Sciences (IES), in the U.S. Department of Education, and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) in the U.S. Department of Justice. This report presents the most recent data available on school…

This report displays, in tabular format, four sets of outcomes, each based on a distinct set of students: (1) Participation (percent of high school graduates enrolled in any public or private college in Ohio); (2) Preparation (course-taking data from surveys that students complete when they register for exams); (3) Remedial Course Enrollment (for…

The authors' goal was to identify factors explaining intention to encourage a patient to follow complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) treatment among general practitioners (GPs), fourth-year medical students, and residents in family medicine. They surveyed 500 GPs and 904 medical students via a self-administered mailed questionnaire that…

This chapter focuses on indicators of postsecondary participation, looking at the characteristics of students who enroll in postsecondary education, students who receive financial aid, and students who receive different levels of postsecondary degrees. Between 1976 and 2004, minority enrollments increased as a percentage of undergraduate…

Colleges are focusing increased effort--and money--to improve the physical condition of existing facilities and address a huge backlog of deferred maintenance. According to "American School & University's" 36th annual Maintenance and Operations (M&O) Cost Study, the median college spends 16.4% of total college budget on M&O, up from 11% the year…

The Departments of Labor and Higher Education, working in close collaboration with the constituent units of public higher education, present this comprehensive report on the employment of graduates of the public colleges and universities. This report summarizes the employment and compensation experience of students who graduated from the State's…