The traditional way for parents to determine which public school their children will attend is as simple as looking at a map. But in some cases, what is the right campus from the perspective of school district planners is not the one desired by students or their parents. As school systems have embraced education reforms in recent years, some…

The aim of the conference reported in this document was to agree on a small set of education indicators that the 22 participating countries could jointly pursue over the next 5 years. Participants discussed methodological problems involved in making cross-national comparisons of outcomes of education; summarized the statistical activities underway…

Using data from one "successful" school district, I argue that, contrary to its egalitarian rhetoric, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) provides a mechanism for identifying the many whom Hernstein and Murray would exclude from schooling beyond the elementary grades because they cannot learn enough to justify the expense of their teaching. To…

The Committee on National Statistics convened a conference in October 1979 to begin to examine the question of how discrimination and equity in education can be measured. The 10 participants represented a wide range of disciplines, and the 15 representatives of federal agencies included both producers and users of indicators of equity. Background…

Claims Alan Bloom's "Closing of the American Mind" and E.D. Hirsch's "Cultural Literacy" lead readers to believe that young Americans are extraordinarily stupid and that in their ignorance we can read the decline and fall of the American way of life. Presents support which resists rather than foments such panic. (NH)

Few people seriously regard students as "products" coming off an educational assembly line, but notions about accountability and quality improvement in higher education are pervaded by manufacturing ideas and metaphors. Because numerical indicators of quality are inevitably expressed by trend lines or statistical control chars of some kind, they…

"School Readiness Indicators: Making Progress for Young Children" was a multi-state initiative that used child well-being indicators to build a change agenda in states and local communities in order to improve school readiness and ensure early school success. The central premise behind this initiative was that top-notch school readiness…

This paper examines two common criticisms of the method that "U.S. News and World Report" used in its annual rankings of the academic quality of colleges and graduate schools. There are constant changes to the formula that make it impossible to interpret yearly shifts in a school's relative ranking in terms of change in its academic…

This document contains the first set of performance indicators about the employment outcomes of higher education in England. Indicators for other areas had previously been developed, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer requested that indicators showing performance outcomes be developed. The only data available for such an indicator were found to…

Many program evaluations involve some type of statistical testing to verify that the program has succeeded in accomplishing initially established goals. In many cases, this takes the form of null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) with t-tests, analysis of variance, or some form of the general linear model. This paper contends that, at least…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is the only continuing measure of the achievement of U.S. students in key subject areas. The National Research Council's Committee on the Evaluation of National and State Assessments of Educational Progress conducted an evaluation of the NAEP. This report contains the conclusions this…

The first complete survey of all state education reports was conducted in 1994. For the 1998 edition, state education staff were asked to identify and update all current state reports that provide accountability for K-12 education or that report on a set of education indicators. As of August, 1998, all states have at least 1 annual accountability…

Getting through the choppy seas of curriculum reform and high stakes testing, as well as meeting predetermined standards and adequate yearly progress, is often difficult for a teacher, let alone a school or district, to ascertain what specific content should be taught and what is actually being taught. Teachers often do not know what has been…

A survey of high school seniors assessed indicators of educational quality and selectivity as predictors of academic reputation (AR) and desire to attend a college. Curriculum rigor and social/cultural activities were predictive of AR; class size and individualized attention were not. Curriculum rigor and individualized attention were predictive…

Explores how accreditation, bond ratings, and magazine rankings--including advancement's role in these assessments--continue to be incomplete and controversial indicators of educational quality. Asserts that advancement officers should work to demonstrate the importance of their efforts, such as increasing endowments and alumni support, within the…