The history books will show that New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg seized control of the city's sprawling public school bureaucracy and its 1.1 million students on July 1, 2002. But it was 18 months later when New Yorkers got their first real taste of what mayoral control and accountability were supposed to be about: when reports of escalating…

Student evaluations of instruction have long been used to evaluate the teaching performance of instructors. However, despite the widespread use of data from student evaluations for the purpose of determining faculty teaching effectiveness, a review of the literature in the area indicates that issues concerning the validity and usefulness of such…

Some professors argue that it is possible to "buy" higher course evaluations by grading more leniently and requiring less work. This study investigated the relations of student effort, appropriateness of class difficulty, and course evaluations with a sample of 463 undergraduates from a mid-sized, Midwestern university. Findings support…

Despite comprehensive school reform (CSR) model developers' best intentions to make school stakeholders adhere strictly to the implementation of model components, school stakeholders implementing CSR models inevitably make adaptations to the CSR model. Adaptations are made to CSR models because school stakeholders internalize CSR model practices…

Administrators, teachers, staff, and other personnel must bear in mind that children are first and foremost our primary concern. As a result of increased accountability, administrators, faculty and personnel at all levels must posses the wisdom, deftness, and competence that heretofore may not have been required. It is of the utmost importance…

The study describes the factors that render possible and restrain students' learning when they try to develop new knowledge through collaboration in a net-based learning environment. The pedagogical platform takes as its starting point a framework of socio-cultural theories of learning and is based on dialogues and collaborative situations in…

Although organizational learning theory and practice have been clarified by practitioners and scholars over the past several years, there is much to be explored regarding interactions between organizational learning culture and employee learning and performance outcomes. This study examined the relationship of organizational learning culture, job…

Implementing an enterprise resource planning system is a complex undertaking. Careful planning, management, communication, and staffing can make the difference between a successful and unsuccessful implementation. (Contains 3 tables.)

This chapter describes a new conceptual model for measuring competencies of higher education graduates. The proposed instrument can become a valuable tool for higher education quality management, policy evaluation, and scientific research. (Contains 1 figure.)

This chapter uses a case study to develop a set of contexts and conditions for improving the alignment of purposes of alumni survey research within and across higher education institutions. (Contains 2 tables.)

This essay is based on a talk I delivered at Texas A&M University on December 10, 2005, in response to an earlier lecture at the university by Professor Samuel P. Huntington. It relies on social science evidence to first address Huntington's contention that Mexicans are overwhelming American borders. It then turns to evidence that Mexican…

A major task of South Africa's new government in 1994 was to design a more racially equitable education system. This article evaluates progress towards this goal using three concepts of equity: equal treatment by race, equal educational opportunity, and educational adequacy. The authors find that the country moved quickly towards a race-blind…

Early interventionists are accountable for the progress of children receiving their services. Technically adequate measures of the progress of individual children are needed. While the Early Communication Indicator (ECI) for infants and toddlers is one such measure, data to support its use are limited to a single research report. In this…

This paper discusses the impact of the introduction of a virtual learning environment (VLE) on teaching practices within a new university in the UK, and explores the factors that have encouraged or, conversely, discouraged, the adoption of the VLE by teaching staff, from the latter's perspective. It is based on findings from the analysis of…

In this article, the challenges and issues of designing next generation learning environments using current and emerging technologies are addressed. An overview of the issues is provided as well as design principles that support the design of instruction and the overall learning environment. Specific methods for creating cognitively complex,…