This report provides information on states' progress in implementing the graduation rate all 50 governors agreed by signing the Graduation Counts Compact in 2005 to adopt. The governors undertook this commitment because they understand the imperative to gather more accurate, comparable data on how many of their students graduate from high school…

The annotated bibliography is designed to be of help to teachers of English as a Second Language (ESL) to an often overlooked population--adult language learners in non-academic settings and adult education programs. And for this group there is typically little research available on second language acquisition (as distinguished from second…

This book, created by three reference librarians, teaches the beginning researcher good research habits. It provides names of tools students should consult for a well-rounded, well-researched paper on a controversial issue in the news. Books, specialized databases, online resources, and agencies to contact are all included. Each…

This guide is a compilation of information from both governmental and private sources on funding opportunities available to local governments, small businesses, organizations, associations, groups, and individuals. The directories, catalogs, guides, newsletters, annual reports, computer database services, and other resources cited in this…

Several technical issues related to the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) were studied. The 1990-91 SASS is a set of four inter-related surveys of public and private elementary and secondary schools, districts, teachers, and administrators conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Preliminary analysis of the 1990-91 SASS…

In 1997 an online survey of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youth was conducted. The survey, which was available only on the Internet, was promoted through magazines and the World Wide Web. It contained more than 150 questions and took about half an hour to complete. Although all people accessing the web site were allowed to complete the…

A study examined 20 years of research represented in the National Reading Conference (NRC) Yearbooks with the purpose of creating an NRC Yearbook database. The study analyzed overall trends in research topics and paradigms used by individuals whose work was reported in the NRC Yearbook between 1975-1995. The analysis was guided by the following…

This Management Information Systems Manual for the Illinois Community College Board (ICCB) provides basic information for submitting data to the ICCB. The manual is published every two years, and an addendum is published in the off years. It highlights and summarizes information from other documents, without being meant to replace those documents.…

Since 1991, the Center for Applied Linguistics has monitored the growth of two-way immersion (TWI) programs in the United States. This information is published online in the Directory of Two-Way Immersion Programs in the United States (2000), accessible at http://www.cal.org/twi/directory. Programs listed in the Directory conform to this general…

This paper is based on information and insights gained from the preliminary data-gathering phase of a project on the acquisition of Irish as first and second language. The main aim of the project is to establish a database constituted of acquisitional data gathered from children acquiring Irish as a first language and in the early stages of…

Papers from the conference in this volume include the following: "Towards Corpus Annotation Standards--The MATE Workbench" (Laila Dybkjaer and Niels Ole Bernsen); "Danish Text-to-Speech Synthesis Based on Stored Acoustic Segments" (Charles Hoequist); "Toward a Method for the Automated Design of Semantic…

A group of research projects based at HP-Labs Bristol, the University of Bristol (England) and ARKive (a new large multimedia database project focused on the worlds biodiversity based in the United Kingdom) are working to develop a flexible model for the indexing of multimedia collections that allows users to annotate content utilizing extensible…

Instructional design for Web-based teaching and learning environments causes problems for two reasons. First, virtual forms of teaching and learning result in little or no direct contact between instructor and learner, making the evaluation of course effectiveness difficult. Second, the Web as a relatively new teaching and learning medium still…

This study attempted to track students (n=2,077) who entered the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities campus) in 1986 but had not completed a degree at that institution within eight years of matriculation. The study utilized the Minnesota Higher Education Services Office's statewide database which allowed researchers to determine if, when, and…

Foreign language teachers are continually searching for better ways of accessing authentic materials and providing experiences that will improve their students' knowledge and skills. The Internet has transformed communication around the world and can play a major role in the foreign language classroom. This digest illustrates how Internet software…