The handbook, designed for Peace Corps volunteers but adaptable for other adult learners, offers ideas about how to improve one's own language learning through effective learning strategies. The handbook intended as a reference, not a text, for when the learner becomes discouraged with his rate of progress, is progressing well but looking for new…

This monograph identifies appropriate quantitative indicators of educational effectiveness and efficiency, and discusses how such indicators should be used to assess education at multiple levels of the system. It focuses on the practical aspects of introducing effectiveness and efficiency concepts/measures into the deliberations of educational…

An evaluation was done of State University of New York (SUNY) Central Administration costs by comparing them to peer systems and by evaluating how economically its duties were carried out. Central Administration provides oversight and executive leadership to the system and manages budgeting, accounting, capital facilities, student affairs and…

This workbook explains how to define what various constituents connected with a public library want it to do and what doing these things well means in qualitative terms. The book aims to define effectiveness for the public library and to provide guidelines for assessing the library's effectiveness and communicating this to stakeholders. The eight…

Political responses to the "cult of efficiency" in the schools, academic freedom, and the role of education in social reform between 1914 and 1921 are traced in issues of the "Nation" and the "New Republic." The variety within political liberalism at the time was reflected in a similar diversity of educational…

A dramatic increase in interlibrary loan (ILL) in academic and research libraries in the last five years, combined with a changing office environment, is forcing reassessment of the relationship between the volume and cost of loans to service quality. In the spring of 1988, a survey was sent to 116 member libraries of the Association of Research…

This position paper presents arguments countering the proposed closing of select small schools--particularly one geographically isolated school--in Randolph County, West Virginia. The first section briefly summarizes the county board of education's plan and rationale for school consolidation and the concerns of residents opposed to the school…

A more familiar and efficient method for estimating the parameters of Cason and Cason's model was examined. Using a two-step analysis based on linear regression, rather than the direct search interative procedure, gave about equally good results while providing a 33 to 1 computer processing time advantage, across 14 cohorts of junior medical…

This report describes a study designed to evaluate and compare the provision of National Technical Information Service (NTIS) documents to users of the McKinney Engineering Library at the University of Texas through Selected Research in Microfiche (SRIM), a standing-order, collection-building service, with the provision of documents through…

This report describes the North Carolina Department of Education's 5-year plan for establishing a statewide management information system. The system is intended to improve fiscal management, personnel administration, and administrative operations, and to ensure efficient resource use. Initial sections present highlights of the plan; background…

The competencies of the university secretary were studied at the University of Southern Maine. In addition to developing position descriptions, competencies that distinguish effective performers were also identified. Based on results of interviews with 24 secretaries, a competency-based model was developed. Fourteen competencies were categorized…

One of the working papers in the final report of the Arizona Board of Regents' Task Force on Excellence, Efficiency and Competitiveness examines the needs of rural Arizona for educational services and proposes means for the provision of those services that can be offered by public universities. Seven sections look at the demography of rural…

One of the working papers in the final report of the Arizona Board of Regents' Task Force on Excellence, Efficiency and Competitiveness, this document focuses on the normal and documented activities that could be described as leading to strategic choices and implementation efforts in the Arizona universities. The strategic planning literature is…

American educational policy is based on three preeminent values: equity, efficiency, and choice. The problem is that these values are often antithetical: an emphasis on one deemphasizes the others. Coming to an acceptable balance among all three values is therefore the essence of public policymaking. Accordingly, this paper takes one of these…

The Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model, a conceptual model for measuring productivity and efficiency, is presented and applied in this report. First, the DEA model is described, and three of its properties that make it particularly useful are identified; i.e., it measures efficiency of units relative to each other rather than to absolute…