This paper is a guide to self-assessment of campus information technology services and includes an assessment questionnaire and guidelines developed by CAUSE and EDUCOM. An introduction stresses the role of self-assessment in an overall quality improvement plan. The following section argues that pressures for higher education accountability and…

This paper focuses on how teachers and administrators share a commitment towards the general principle of accountability in regard to efficiency in educational programs. The notion of efficiency is shown to have limited application to complex multidimensional processes, including those of classroom language learning and of language program…

A number of Federal education reform initiatives, either enacted or under consideration by the Congress, provide schools with regulatory flexibility. In response to two Congressional committees, this study had the following objectives: (1) describe state regulatory flexibility efforts; (2) describe how schools used flexibility to attempt…

During the last few years, there has been a general emphasis in higher education on quality issues and the use of outcomes measures to assess institutional effectiveness. The quality emphasis in education suggests that previously defined performance standards are met through a review of outcomes assessment. This emphasis on outcomes measures…

Cooperative learning (CL) is reviewed as a tool for helping educationally disadvantaged or limited-English-speaking students. A review of meta analyses and literature on CL indicates its effectiveness when both group goals and individual accountability are incorporated into learning methods. The achievement gap between traditional majority…

Efforts to assess institutional effectiveness not only enable community colleges to meet accreditation mandates, but can also serve as a catalyst for institutional renewal. Institutional effectiveness has become an important topic for the 1990s as a result of past neglect of accountability, new legislative mandates for education, changes in…

This ERIC Digest was adapted from the Association for Childhood Education International's (ACEI) 1991 position paper on standardized testing. Since the publication of "A Nation at Risk" in 1983, standardized testing programs have expanded greatly. Tests may be of pencil-and-paper or performance-oriented varieties. The purposes of tests…

This report focuses on assessing the quality of undergraduate education. A framework for thinking about the topic is provided, followed by a discussion of the ways in which the educational context is typically organized and student achievement is typically measured, with suggestions for new indicators and measures. The significance of contexts and…

This report to the U.S. Congress reviews monitoring activities of the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) in regard to formula grant programs. The study looked at dates of the most recent monitoring visits to the state education agencies and calculated key steps in the monitoring process, such as the time from visit to issuance of the…

Ways of rethinking school financial policy issues are examined in this report. This rethinking has evolved from growing recognition of two related principles: school finance as part of public finance; and policy formation as a product of commitments and constraints. Principles of public finance, commitments and constraints are described. Five…

This book approaches the theory and practice of assessment with an overview of the condition of American higher education, addressing its scope, objectives, and diversity. From that base, the book explores the challenges which society poses to campuses in terms of justification of expenditures and demonstration of tangible outcomes. It discusses…

Competing norms for justifying actions and decisions in teaching and their effects on the curriculum and teacher learning are discussed. Interpreting teaching as a moral action, this paper argues that a personal orientation (personal practice, feeling, or beliefs) removes teacher action and decisions from the realm of objective and professional…

This paper argues that school boards give away too much in contract negotiations with teacher associations without making sure the concessions they make result in higher educational quality. Educational administrators' general lack of expertise in labor relations, the author maintains, tends to lead to low quality contracts. Reviewing 11 articles…

Hearings are presented on the proliferation of interstate guarantee arrangements in the area of student loans, and the effect of such arrangements on student access to loan capital. Topics include: the desirability of establishing territorial monopolies for student loan guarantee agencies, the views of the Higher Education Assistance Foundation…

One of a series of units on business designed for secondary school students, this packet examines the issues concerning business responsibility for safe products. Teacher and student materials are provided in separate sections. The teacher's guide presents an overview of activities and objectives, five detailed lesson plans, answer keys,…