Most of the recent literature on the achievement effects of school size has examined school and district performance. These studies have demonstrated substantial benefits of smaller school and district size in impoverished settings. To date, however, no work has adequately examined the relationship of size and socioeconomic status (SES) with…

Increasingly school leaders are being challenged to take a more instructionally focused role in their schools. This paper tracks the leadership challenges through a change process involving an assistant principal and a group of teachers, supported by a consultant, through four phases of an action research project. During the project the…

The Kessler 10 Psychological Distress Scale (K10) is a brief 10-item questionnaire designed to measure the level of distress and severity associated with psychological symptoms in population surveys. It is being used widely, including in the World Health Organization World Mental Health Survey, and as a clinical outcome measure, although little…

Advances in technology available to access test data coupled with the challenges of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) are pushing schools to grapple with the complexities of test score data. With the current frenzy to raise test scores, there is little attention being paid to teacher development in learning to use data to improve learning. For the past…

Narrative data from two earlier studies of adaptation to age-related visual impairment were examined for constellations of stressors and coping styles. In the course of previous qualitative analyses, the researchers identified stress and coping codes according to behavioral, psychological, and social domains using a grounded theory approach. In…

Understanding how immigrants' children form educational expectations may yield insights into the causes of eventual ethnic disparities in socioeconomic attainments. This article examines how the average relative premigration educational status of the immigrant group and the immigrant group's average postmigration SES shape the educational…

This paper explores technical questions of ethnographic study and uses as an example an actual episode observing college students and the subsequent decisions and steps taken to produce a written account. In particular, the paper seeks to address the question of researcher subjectivity by examining some issues relating to the practice of…

The usefulness of state-by-state comparisons and other educational indicators is discussed in this paper, which seeks to improve report writing and data presentation skills. The first part offers an example of a policy report that uses key education indicators to describe the Arizona education system. Tables and data interpretation describe the…

A series of six papers and an introduction which present the results and tentative analyses of studies investigating such constructs as self-esteem, perceptions of control, and competence are included in this document. These papers are: (1) "Multiple Dimensions of Locus of Control and Their Relationship To Standardized Achievement Scores in Fifth…

This book provides elementary and middle school teachers with practical ideas on the use and teaching of graphs. Five sections consist of: (1) "Graphs--What Are They and How Are They Used?"; (2) "Levels of Graph Comprehension"; (3) "Collecting, Organizing, and Analyzing Data"; (4) "Constructing, Interpreting, and Writing about Graphs"; and (5)…

Procedures used in Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) dissertations at the University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa) were studied. Focus was on identifying: (1) characteristics of the research designs used; (2) sources of the instruments used to collect data; (3) reports of reliability estimates and evidence of validity of the instruments; and (4) types of…

A major focus for research in preparation programs should be on the practice of administration. For some time, the preparation of educational administrators has been rooted in the traditional liberal arts approach--the approach of a discipline--as a model for preparing the practitioner. Emphasis has shifted to the concept of the accurate…

The study examined the relationship between probe and training conditions on performance of nine severely handicapped students on functional tasks in classroom and community settings. Findings led to the following recommendations to teachers: measures of student performance under natural or probe conditions should be evaluated in addition to…

A graph is an example of a symbol system which encodes information through the juxtaposition of marks in a two dimensional plane; decoding the meaning of a graph uses specific attributes of the human visual system. This study was undertaken to identify some variables critical to graph interpretation as a first step in designing better curriculum…

Graphical methods for displaying data, as well as available computer software and hardware, are reviewed. The authors have emphasized the types of graphs which are most relevant to the needs of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and its readers. The following types of graphs are described: tabulations, stem-and-leaf displays,…