This volume considers both the philosophical bases and the practical realities of individualization through the analysis of various approaches to the contract learning process. The first section serves as an introduction to contracting. Chapter 1 develops the concept of contract learning and attempts to set it in perspective within the larger…

This book examines the process of change in American public education, focusing in particular on various experiments in performance contracting that were conducted between 1969 and 1973. Chapter 1 briefly reviews the process of change in education and describes the performance contracting concept and the ways its advocates expected it to overcome…

The two objectives of this accountability project carried out in St. Elizabeth School District, Mo., were: (a) to increase the average student achievement by at least 5 percent at each level K-12 in the four basic areas of language arts, mathematics, social studies, and science during the 1972-73 school term as measured by scores on the Stanford…

This document discusses some of the more important management skills and procedures needed for the design, implementation, and operation of performance contracting programs for education; and explores the match between the needed and the currently available management skills and procedures in school district management. The management practices…

This speech describes accountability as the matching of intent to results and explains the utility of planning, programing, budgeting systems in implementing an accountability policy in school systems. (JF)

The intent of the Commission on Reading of the National Council of Teachers of English in developing this group of articles was to provide insight into critical issues related to accountability and reading instruction. The initial presentation by James Laffey develops a brief historical analysis of educational accountability, followed by a…

Visits in the Spring of 1972 to five school districts (Norfolk, Virginia; Texarkana, Arkansas; Gary, Indiana; Gilroy, California; and Grand Rapids, Michigan) that had implemented educational performance contracting programs during the 1970-71 school year are reported. Changes in the content and methods of instruction, measurement and evaluation,…

The components of an educational program, designed to ensure the attainment of specific objectives, are described. Program objectives included the introduction of a new individualized instructional system operating within the same constraints experienced by public school staff, insurance that each child in the program would receive his fair share…

This paper suggests guidelines designed for use by speech communication teachers in assessing the competency of their students. The author proposes four kinds of evaluation of cognitive, affective, and psychomotor learning (three types of learning essential for the speech communication classroom): placement, formative, diagnostic, and summative.…

A program under a performance contract in a Westland, Mich., elementary school designed to improve reading and learning abilities was studied. In a highly mobile community of 75 per cent Appalachian background and generally low level of education, 70-80 per cent of the children tested below grade level on standardized tests. The program had two…

This paper reports an evaluation of a performance contract in reading with 2,500 seventh-grade students. Seventy-five percent of the students were to increase their reading speed five times over their beginning level with ten percent more comprehension after three months of instruction. Results indicated that only thirteen percent of the students…

This report describes briefly the experimental design and presents the basic contract provisions. The experiment results reveal that performance contracting is no more successful than traditional classroom methods in improving the reading and mathematics skills of poor children. Both control and experimental groups performed equally poorly in…

This speech discusses performance contracting as educational research, notes some evaluation problems, and proposes solutions to these problems. The term performance contracting, according to the report, denotes an administrative rather than an instructional innovation. The author observes that the understanding of instruction and learning derived…

The proceedings of this institute, focusing on the opportunities and implications of accountability in community college education, include the eight papers presented as well as the speeches of the four keynote speakers. Several themes and ideas about accountability recur in the papers including the basic questions of "accountability to…

Accreditation by contract, a plan proposed by the National Association of Schools and Colleges, is based on the institution's commitment to comprehensive, continuous, and long-range planning and evaluation; its key is the development of an action plan for assessing and better meeting the needs of students and for evaluating the quality and…