This paper is intended to promote discussion among professionals, policymakers, employers, parents, and individuals with disabilities concerning current and future challenges facing secondary education and transition services nationally. The issues identified and discussed should not, however, be viewed as inclusive of the full range of possible…

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA) of 2004 established a requirement that all states develop and submit to the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) a performance plan designed to improve the educational and functional outcomes for children with disabilities. The state plan must…

This exploratory data mining project used distance-based clustering algorithms to study three indicators of student behavioral data collectively called AB-Index, and established a typology of six types of learners for a suburban community college. The study is based on the notion that student behavioral data are a good basis for new ways of doing…

Analysis by researchers of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute (TRPI) on Advanced Placement (AP) courses in California public high schools in the mid-1990s concluded that although high school AP programs offered talented youngsters the opportunity to stretch their mental horizons and preview the challenges of college-level coursework, the programs…

The New Horizons for Primary Schools (NHP) was implemented in 72 government schools in Jamaica, from 1998-2005. The program provided support to schools on the basis of needs identified through the preparation of a School Development Plan (also called a School Improvement Plan). This independent evaluation report first compares the schools in the…

This year's Brown Center Report examines several issues that are important to No Child Left Behind and ongoing efforts to improve American schools. The first section of the report analyzes the latest data on student achievement and asks how the nation's students are doing in reading and mathematics. Achievement in rural schools receives a closer…

This report looks at the affordability of public 4-year post-secondary education in 50 US States and 10 Canadian provinces. Public 4-year post-secondary education was found to be more affordable in the United States on five of the six affordability measures in the report; on the sixth, the two countries were tied. In general, in the United States…

Over the past few decades, higher education has become available around the world to a degree unimaginable to earlier generations. In many ways, accessible mass higher education is the foundation of the modern knowledge economy, and without it, the bright futures of many youth around the world would be dimmed. Preserving and enhancing the…

This publication presents the outcomes of a distance education course on development and dissemination of indicators used for educational planning. The course took place from November 2000 to February 2001 and was attended by representatives from the ministries of education of Brazil, Cambodia, Estonia, Gambia, Lithuania, and Thailand. The overall…

This report provides important state-by-state information on the characteristics and performance of schools and students in each state, information that is vital to monitoring the progress and evaluating the success of local, state, and national education reforms. The report disaggregates student achievement data so that attention can be focused…

The educational indicators in this publication represent the consensus of professional thinking on how to measure the current state of education internationally. This year's edition brings the comparative review of educational systems to the end of the 1990s so that for the first time the indicators of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and…

This document is intended to build on the advice given in the publication "How good is our school?" It is intended to be of use to staff in local authorities and schools who are involved in implementing the recommendations of "Hungry for Success." This guide can be used to support in evaluating effectiveness in implementing…

The revised edition of "How good is our school?" (HM Inspectorate of Education, 2002) has been widely welcomed in schools and authorities. This document is one of a series of guides which builds on, but does not repeat, the advice on self-evaluation given in "How good is our school?" The introductory publication to the series,…

The importance and urgency of rural education to each state was assessed using seven and nine indicators, respectively. The Mid-South Delta, central Appalachia, coastal Southeast, the north Plains, and northern New England emerged as priority rural education regions. The most important urgency indicators were teacher salaries, computer use, school…

Examines educational services delivery to the entire school and to those who scored below the median on achievement tests in 242 Louisiana elementary schools. Results indicate that mean masking occurs in about 17 percent of schools, most frequently when schools do an above-average job of educating the lowest quartile. (SLD)