Ten New Zealand kindergartens, play centers, and child care centers were studied to assess the consequences of government-mandated charter development. Issues related to the charter document, consultation, effects on centers and participants, government bureaucracy, and the impact of becoming chartered were examined. It was found that there was…

A Total Quality Management team was formed at Oregon State University to improve the quality of student information publications. The team studied the critical process in detail, identified "customers" of student information publications, defined information to be solicited from the customers, interviewed them, and gathered data for…

The base-year survey of the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88) took place in spring 1988. Data on a variety of topics were obtained by questionnaires and achievement tests administered to a national probability sample of 25,000 eighth-graders. This report presents results of an examination of the quality of responses of…

This paper discusses strategic planning for quality in higher education and provides specific examples of institutions working to adopt strategic quality planning. In particular the paper looks at institutions adopting the Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) principles. A section on early lessons notes common obstacles to CQI implementation in…

These guidelines for service evaluation arose out of a 1986 meeting of the International League of Societies for Persons with Mental Handicap. An introduction focuses on the concepts of support and service and the need for minimizing restrictiveness and empowering the individual. Seven principles are enumerated, specifying the rights of people…

This guide to assessing engineering education in Sub-Saharan Africa consists of three sections, covering: (1) assessment of qualitative and quantitative needs; (2) assessment of the engineering education institution in developing countries; and (3) methods of forecasting demand for engineers; assessment of the efficiency of engineering training…

This book, written by an organizational development director and consultant in the fields of quality improvement, management, and design of training systems to Fortune 500 clients, offers a six-step improvement strategy and a six-phase training curriculum that can be adapted to the needs of companies in various fields. Seven chapters present ideas…

The gap between learning and assessment is apparent both in the beliefs of children, who often see no connection between the two, and in the practices of teachers, who do not choose to use the most recently developed means of assessment. This gap stems from management theory and from learning theory. Traditional management in the United States has…

A project was conducted to improve the productivity and efficiency of 10 manufacturers by providing workplace literacy instruction to workers lacking basic skills required for their jobs, and to improve the capability of educational programs to meet the basic skill needs of the manufacturing industry by developing an evaluation manual for basic…

This publication consists of an essay entitled "Managerialism and the Academic Profession: The Case of England," by Martin Trow, along with a commentary on the essay by Paul Clark. Trow argues that over the past decade British higher education has undergone a more profound reorientation than any other system among industrial societies.…

This "feature issue" focuses on integrated leisure and recreation for developmentally disabled persons and includes descriptions of innovative leisure/recreation programs which allow the realization of the concepts of normalization and least restrictive environment. Brief articles include the following titles and authors: "Challenging the…

Accountability is important in today's education. Teachers are expected to maintain high standards of excellence for themselves and their students and to demonstrate professional growth. Though expectations for teachers are usually very similar, expectations of teachers vary enormously. The article highlights certain differences by looking at four…

Responding to the call for higher education to adopt a new paradigm in managing its administrative processes, an Institutional Research Office at Delaware County Community College (DCCC) in Pennsylvania made a two-year effort to use a Total Quality approach in its management. Total Quality Management is a Japanese movement based on the teachings…

Total Quality Management (TQM), a technique traditionally reserved for the manufacturing sector, has recently spread to service companies, government agencies, and educational institutions. TQM places responsibility for quality problems with management rather than on the workers. A principal concept of TQM is the management of Process Variation,…

Credentialing agencies that use multi-test examinations (MTEs) should be concerned with the quality of pass/fail outcomes as well as with the proportion of candidates passing. This study addressed three questions: (1) the effects on passing rate of MTE reliability, number of tests comprising a MTE, and correlations between pairs of component…