Developing a vision of the future and deciding how an organization will look and function in that future are essential ingredients of planning for organizational success. This handbook offers tools for strategic planning and conducting needs-assessment studies. Chapter 1 describes societal changes in the United States and its impact on education.…

The California Community Colleges (CCC) has implemented a prototype model for determining student transfer readiness as a primary means of assessing community college transfer effectiveness. This report provides definitions of transfer readiness and guidelines for colleges participating in the CCC transfer readiness study. First, a memorandum from…

Recent calls for collaborative efforts appear to be aimed at universities doing a better job at supporting school-improvement efforts. This paper describes outcomes of a project in which university faculty supported and trained local administrators and teachers at one school in the use of collaborative action research to improve teaching and…

This report evaluates the degree to which current assessment practices and programs include students with disabilities. It notes the difficulty of accurately determining the participation of students with disabilities in large-scale assessment programs due to a lack of data, differing definitions of eligible testing populations, and the…

The Common Core of Data (CCD) is the primary database of the National Center for Education Statistics on elementary and secondary education in the United States. CCD is a comprehensive, annual, national statistical database of all elementary and secondary schools and school districts. It contains data that are comparable across all states, and all…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is an ongoing, congressionally mandated national survey of the knowledge, skills, and understanding of young Americans in major subjects usually taught in school. This document is a guide to the files of the first NAEP Trial State Assessment (1990). The Trial State Assessment collected…

In 1988, the United States Congress passed legislation that created the School Dropout Demonstration Assistance Program (SDDAP). The program provides funding for local educational agencies, community-based organizations, and educational partnerships to establish effective programs. This report, the second of two volumes, presents statistical data…

This activity guide, developed to provide hands-on environmental education activities geared to Singletary Lake State Park in North Carolina, is targeted for grades 6, 7, and 8 and meets curriculum objectives of the standard course of study established by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. Three types of activities are included:…

This activity guide, developed to provide hands-on environmental education activities geared to Jones Lake State Park in North Carolina, is targeted for grades 6, 7, and 8 and meets curriculum objectives in the standard course of study established by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. Three types of activities are included:…

This document was prepared from information provided by state child protective services agencies on the 1991 Summary Data Component Form of the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS). The report is a working document that provides a basis for developing and refining the approach to collecting national information on child…

This report presents the results of a U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) review of lender and Department of Education controls over the accuracy of lender-submitted quarterly billings under the Federal Family Education Loan Program, also known as the guaranteed student loan program. It reports that both lenders and the Department of Education…

The training of researchers in the educational technology field has continued in the traditional vein of the experimental paradigm. This document describes a workshop presented to balance that training and to prepare students to undertake research in a non-traditional way. The workshop aimed to acquaint students with non-causal naturalistic…

Providing an overview of the educational and fiscal accountability system for community colleges in the state of California, this paper discusses the development of the system and describes the role of the Chancellor's Office (CO) of the California Community Colleges in accountability. Following a review of state and federal programs that include…

Intended for planners and providers of welfare-to-work and other employment and training programs, this guide explains the steps entailed in conducting a cost analysis. The following topics are discussed in the book's six chapters: use of cost analysis before programs and during their implementation; basics of conducting a cost analysis (issue of…

This report presents the results of a survey of member institutions of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) concerning administration views on student retention, and student retention and attrition and campus responses to this problem. Retention Activity Reports for each responding institution (N=183) are provided.…