In evaluating remedial reading programs, 10 guiding principles should be observed. Programs should educate teachers, increase time on task, provide taped books, transfer new skills to children's textbooks, test appropriately, employ video and telecommunications technologies, provide feedback, talk to parents, encourage children to take learning…

This study developed concordant relationships between American College Testing Program and Scholastic Assessment Test scores for students taking both examinations between October 1994 and December 1996. Fourteen universities and two state education departments participated in the study. Text provides information on data collection, sample…

Describes progress in researching the policy, processes, and impact of parental choice of (British) secondary schools since 1988. Captures varied perspectives, insights, and intellectual tensions. Parental choice may benefit choosers in relation to everyone else without necessarily improving standards overall. Researchers may be abandoning study…

Performance assessment can help educators develop ways to reveal individual students' distinctive features and secure information about learning. These opportunities will be wasted unless the public's attitudes and expectations toward schooling are changed. Attitudes cannot change without revising policies inhibiting school children's educational…

Focuses on developing data for measuring the relevancy of music library collections for doctoral research. Bibliographies of music dissertations from doctoral programs throughout the United States were tabulated and analyzed. Core lists of journals were developed and compared to lists compiled by analyzing doctoral dissertation bibliographies from…

Reviews the literature on faculty evaluation to define how different purposes and competing values have produced two approaches. A procedural approach relies upon both self-evaluation and appraisals by peers, administrators, and students. The developmental approach rests upon teaching portfolios, dossiers, and self-evaluations. Contains 23…

Presents a 71-item annotated bibliography of selected children's books (published between 1992 and 1996) dealing with disabilities, along with a brief description of criteria used to evaluate the books. Includes sections on AIDS, asthma, autism, blindness, deafness, dyslexia, mental disabilities, and physical disabilities. (RS)

Discusses new roles for school librarians as electronic access to information increases, including instructional partners with classroom teachers; information specialists; Internet navigators; evaluators of information found on the Internet; program administrators; staff developers; and parent Internet educators. Lists pertinent Web sites. (LRW)

Like county governments, hospitals, and municipalities, superintendents must develop policies and protocols for requesting proposals, administering contracts, and ensuring desired results of private-sector services. Administrators should consider performance criteria, legal issues, cost and efficiency analysis, contractor evaluation criteria, and…

Reasons for a national shift from traditional to alternative assessment practices are examined, and the philosophical beliefs and theoretical assumptions of traditional and alternative assessment are examined. Classroom implications of this paradigm shift for instructional strategies, formative and summative evaluation, development of rubrics used…

A study investigated the effect of different diagnostic criteria on the identification of emotional or behavioral disorders in 3694 second-grade children. Results indicated the 13 different diagnostic combinations identified from 1.1% to 27.5% of the sample. Four of these combinations resulted in significant ethnic or gender bias. (Author/CR)

A study examined the feasibility and desirability of assessing reflective practice in student teachers studying early childhood literacy. While the study reaffirmed the importance of developing reflective teachers, it also highlighted the difficulties of equitably or meaningfully assessing reflection. Use of alternative methodologies in future…

Discussion of the appropriateness of evaluation criteria and measures for information retrieval focuses on a study that investigated the appropriateness of 20 measures, including precision and recall, for evaluating interactive information retrieval performance representing 4 major evaluation criteria. The importance of user satisfaction in…

Research on use of student evaluations of faculty as a source of information on good teaching is reviewed, and the differential importance of criteria expressed in the rating forms is discussed. It is concluded that while the data in the evaluations can have varied interpretations, they can also be an important source of information for…

A recent report on University of California admissions practices over the last five years reveals that it is not uncommon for college admissions offices to admit otherwise unqualified students based on special admissions considerations, such as relationship to alumni or large donors. Experts feel the practice is nationwide. Survey data on relative…