Some issues in defining dropouts and reporting information about them are explored, with reference to the Common Core of Data (CCD) survey of the National Center for Education Statistics. There has not been any uniform national count of how many students leave school, and no commonly accepted definition has been developed that allows a number to…

This digest is intended to help parents and teachers understand and cope with underachievement in gifted students. Underachievement is defined and its various components (e.g., content and situation specificity and ties to self-concept development) are explained. Strategies to reverse patterns of underachievement are classified as either…

This digest is derived from Susan Baum's "Being Gifted and Learning Disabled...From Definition to Practical Intervention." The learning disabled gifted are grouped into three categories: identified gifted students who have subtle learning disabilities, unidentified students whose gifts and disabilities may be masked by average…

The report presents recommendations from a 1981 meeting sponsored by Unesco (United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organization) on the topic of integration of severely/multiply handicapped persons into general and vocational education. A summary of discussion topics addresses terminology; the concept of integration--its advantages and…

Recommendations concerning the reading, writing, and mathematics skills that are needed by students entering degree programs in Minnesota postsecondary institutions are offered by a Minnesota Higher Education Coordinating Board task force. In addition to describing reading skills that students need for most college degree programs, conditions…

There has been a considerable expansion in the uses and definitions of giftedness constructs since 1958, when constructs were typically defined in very narrow cognitive terms (such as intelligence test scores). Currently, gifted constructs have a wide variety of definitions which reflect closely-linked processes used for identifying and selecting…

Essential to the definition of an effective school is an operational definition of minimum academic mastery as the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and concepts that enable the student to be demonstrably successful in the next grade level in the same school or in any other school in the United States. An effective schools program, such as the one…

Founded in 1969, the Migrant Student Record Transfer System (MSRTS) is a nationwide computerized information network which records, maintains, and rapidly transfers educational and health information on more than 750,000 identified migrant children in 29 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Based in Little Rock, Arkansas, the…

Members of the educational community are increasingly concerned that the dropout rate is too high. However, concerned educators and researchers do not agree who should be included in the data to determine the dropout rate. National definitions are needed so that accurate comparisons can be made. There is also a need to assess the effectiveness of…

Dropout rates reported by states and school districts are produced by a variety of accounting procedures. Since these rates are difficult to compare and interpret, they fail to correctly measure the dropout rate. A uniform definition of school dropout is needed. The degree of variation was examined by analyzing 21 local definitions. The five…

Problems associated with the use of the Higher Education General Information Survey (HEGIS) data to make institutional comparisons are discussed. It is noted that information collected by HEGIS includes data on enrollment, degrees, finances, employees, libraries, and physical facilities. Attention is directed to the following problems with the…

Concerns regarding education for the gifted and talented and excellence in education are addressed in this first volume of a 1982 public hearing. Issues considered in the hearing include: the impact of technological advancements on education; the struggle between the conflicting educational goals of excellence and equity; the need to support…

As part of an ongoing effort to understand the processes people employ in reading technical material and the ways in which computer based job aids can assist people in doing complex tasks, a study was conducted to determine how subjects engaged in an assembly task use a detailed and hierarchically organized information structure (Hypertext) to…

Crucial, technologically oriented issues currently facing educators are addressed in the following 11 articles: (1) "The Definition of Educational Technology: An Emerging Stability," by Donald P. Ely; (2) "Media Applications to Instruction: Current Theoretical Considerations," by Gerald M. Torkelson; (3) "The Dilemma of…

The purpose of this study is to contribute to an understanding of how errors could be employed in mathematics instruction so that the students use them constructively in support of their learning of mathematics. A teaching experiment was designed to create an ideal context in which the pedagogical approach to errors as springboards could be…