This guide provides advice and recommendations on designing a system of external quality assessment (EQA) for systems and institutions of higher education. Based on a Dutch national model, key features of the suggested system include: ownership by higher education institutions themselves although sanctioned by the government; primary aims of…

Although faced with declining revenues and increasing enrollments, community colleges have also traditionally provided expensive support services for nontraditional students and maintained costly technological capacities to respond to the training needs of business. Financial decision-makers face unsettling questions as they attempt to achieve…

The Education Commission of the States presents an urban education policy framework that is guided by the firm conclusion that state and city leaders must develop a collaborative approach to improve the state and urban education system. Toward this end, the following recommendations are made: (1) raise the state's academic standards; (2) free up…

On October 20, 1994, President Clinton signed into law the Improving America's Schools Act of 1994. This statute contains amendments to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, including the reauthorization of Chapter 1, as the newly entitled Title I. The reauthorized Title I drastically restructures the direction of former remedial…

Many on both "the left" and "the right" passionately oppose an outcome-based approach to education, although their reasons are different. A focus on results, on what children actually learn and how well they learn it, enables taxpayers to hold educators accountable for results. But this apparent good idea has led to…

Since 1992, the New American Schools Development Corporation (NASDC) has supported nine teams that developed designs for high-performance schools. This workbook is a guide developed for NASDC and for school-based reformers. It presents a framework for student and program evaluation called progress assessment. Chapters 2 through 5 provide…

This handbook has been prepared to assist Albertans in understanding the provincial charter school concept, to assist charter organizers with their planning and preparation for the establishment of charter schools in Alberta, and to assist those responsible for processing charter school applications. Bill 19, The School Amendment Act, which…

The growing demand for colleges and universities to be accountable to their publics and the recognition that assessment is of little value without a systematic planning effort have led many institutions to turn to the concept of Total Quality Management (TQM). This pamphlet discusses the process of adapting TQM to a typical community college, a…

This monograph reviews recent trends in school reform and proposes "learner-based accountability" as a new paradigm for conceptualizing and implementing school reform. The first chapter notes both an economic mandate for school change and a mandate for increased equity. It identifies key findings of the school effectiveness movement and…

This paper reviews the concept of performance funding (PF) in governmental and higher education budgeting at the state level, reports the results of a recent national study of state-level PF for higher education, and assesses the likelihood that PF will become a permanent fixture in most states' approaches to budgeting for higher education. The…

This paper explores educational productivity in Texas as it relates to the development of an educational productivity model based on information in the Accountability System of the Texas Education Agency. A number of educational inputs were identified that were found to be related to specific educational outputs. Stepwise regression analysis was…

This book applies the "Principles of Good Practice for Assessing Student Learning" developed by the American Association for Higher Education (AAHE) to 82 case examples of assessment strategies being implemented at American institutions of higher education. Part 1 presents 10 chapters each covering one of the nine AAHE principles (and an…

On March 31, 1993, President Clinton signed into law the Goals 2000: Educate America Act. The Goals 2000 Act sets educational improvement and participation as national priorities to be achieved through local and state ingenuity, not federal control. This document offers general information on the Act and provides questions to help educators and…

This report addresses the issue of "academic productivity," and the critical views of academia held by the public. The section titled "Quality Academics, Quality Productivity," posits that using new notions of productivity, with their emphasis on quality rather than quantity, will allow academia to increase its own…

Schools represent a major social investment in Australia. Assessment of Australian schools' performance depends on how one defines what they should be doing and on how well they can be expected to do it. In the official account, schools are of "high quality and modest cost" when compared with their own past and other school systems. An…