This "College Choice Report" is part of a report series that focuses on the ACT-tested high school graduating class of 2013. The focus of this year's "College Choice Report" is students' selection of a college major or program of study among the ACT-tested high school graduating class of 2013. This year's report is provided in…

This research is conducted to examine what is currently evaluated with respect to teaching in Nigerian public universities and to produce instruments that would be useful for examining the course and teaching effectiveness of course lecturers. Telephone interview of ten (10) professors in ten public Nigerian Universities is used to elicit…

Quality assurance (QA) and accreditation in higher education include the systematic management and assessment of procedures to monitor performance and to address areas of improvement. In the context of globalization, without assuring the quality of higher education programmes it is not possible to ensure credit transfer and student mobility, to…

College readiness is measured by the number and percentage of 12th grade graduates who complete all the courses required for entrance to the University of California (UC) and/or California State University (CSU) with a grade of "C" or better. Course completion represents only a portion of the entrance requirements for UC or CSU; not all…

Nearly three years ago, in an effort to understand just how to get student teaching "right," the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) entered into a comprehensive review of the student teaching experience. For this work, the authors focused on its delivery at the undergraduate level for future elementary teachers, but they can identify no…

In an effort to understand what makes a student teaching experience strong, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) has undertaken this comprehensive review. Over a period of two years, NCTQ researchers examined the student teaching programs of a stratified random sample of 134 higher education institutions across the United States, with at…

Simplify your approach to implementing Response-to-Intervention (RTI) and make strides toward improved achievement in your high school. In this book, experienced educator Jeremy Koselak shows high school leaders how to attain measurable results through a framework of tiered, dynamic intervention strategies known as RTI. With an awareness of the…

This study examined test-optional admission policies and their effect on the composition of the student body at King's College. According to the College Board (2009), students from underrepresented populations do not perform as well as White students on standardized tests. Therefore, higher education institutions have established test-optional…

The Problem: This study was designed to analyze the evaluation criteria of the instruments used to evaluate superintendents, the job descriptions for those superintendents, and the goals written as part of their Individual Administrator Professional Development Plans (IAPDPs) to determine whether superintendents are being held accountable for…

This "Rating a Teacher Observation Tool" identifies five simple questions and provides an easy-to-use scorecard to help policymakers decide whether an observation framework is likely to produce fair and accurate results. The five questions are: (1) Do the criteria and tools cover the classroom performance areas most connected to student outcomes?…

This article discusses IMPACT, District of Columbia's (D.C.) new evaluation system, which was launched in the fall of 2009 by former D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee, and was immediately lauded as a model for the rest of the nation. Much of the media focus on IMPACT has been about its use of test scores--so-called Value Added Measures--to judge…

Males have significantly higher average scores than females on the SAT I quantitative section, which is designed to predict first-year college success in mathematics. However, it has been shown that gender gaps in performance on the SAT I have little to do with college readiness; rather they are due to the misaligned content of the instrument, as…

Faced with budget cuts, some cash-strapped state universities are stepping up their recruitment of higher paying out-of-state undergraduates, a move that critics say is unfair to the states' residents and could affect in-state minority applicants. The University of California system and the University of Washington in Seattle have openly declared…

This paper investigates three English textbooks for primary classes 4, 5 and 6 in Ghana from the "Gateway to English for Primary Schools" series, and their complementary teachers' guides, in order to determine the assumptions about teaching and learning which the books embody. The paper pays particular attention to the approach to…

Much grading of student work is based, overtly or tacitly, on assumptions derived from scientific measurement. However, the practice of grading and the cumulation of grades into an overall index of achievement are socially constructed activities that fall a long way short of what is expected of scientific measurement. If scientific measurement is…