Community colleges are the most local of higher education institutions in the United States. As an engine of educational advancement for those who do not readily have access to four-year institutions, the community college has become as cemented into the community infrastructure as the K-12 public education system. The academic and local character…

Market-oriented reforms and school choice policies have had a high political profile in a number of developed countries. This article examines the issue of school choice through the lens of the English market-oriented reforms; it focuses on the quasi-regulation and regulation of admissions to publicly funded secondary schools. It examines…

This chapter examines the job outlook for occupations where the most important path to entry is through programs typically found at the community college: an associate degree or postsecondary training but less than a degree. The discussion draws on labor market projections from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the federal agency charged…

In 1998, the California legislature passed Senate Bill SB 2042 which replaced the previous teacher certification legislation. The new law required that all elementary and secondary teacher certification programs in the State of California align their programs with new teaching standards. These standards included Teacher Performance Expectations…

Good quality data is paramount for applied economic research. If the data are distorted, corresponding conclusions may be incorrect. We demonstrate how Benford's law, the distribution that first digits of numbers in certain data sets should follow, can be used to test for data abnormalities. We conduct an analysis of nine commonly used data sets…

The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of using renewable energy data, obtained from a comprehensive data acquisition system, on improving students' learning and developing their higher-order learning skills. This study used renewable energy data available through a data acquisition system installed and tested by the Green Research…

Avoiding statistical mistakes is important for educators at all levels. Basic concepts will help you to avoid making mistakes using statistics and to look at data with a critical eye. Statistical data is used at educational institutions for many purposes. It can be used to support budget requests, changes in educational philosophy, changes to…

The purpose of this article is to provide the necessary tools for institutional researchers to conduct a logistic regression analysis and interpret the results. Aspects of the logistic regression procedure that are necessary to evaluate models are presented and discussed with an emphasis on cutoff values and choosing the appropriate number of…

The mass consumption of agrochemicals, including manufactured fertilizers and pesticides, by industrialized agricultural systems worldwide threatens human health and the health of ecosystems. The production of these agricultural inputs is a highly energy- and capital-intensive process, and their application contributes to a variety of direct and…

Studies report that students often fail to consider familiar aspects of reality in solving mathematical word problems. This study explored how different features of mathematical problems influence the way that undergraduate students employ realistic considerations in mathematical problem solving. Incorporating familiar contents in the word…

The Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE), a unit within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), is responsible for advising the Assistant Secretary for Children and Families on increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of programs to improve the economic and social well-being of children and families. In collaboration…

The GED[R] English as a Second Language (GED ESL) Test was designed to serve as an adjunct to the GED test battery when an examinee takes either the Spanish- or French-language version of the tests. The GED ESL Test is a criterion-referenced, multiple-choice instrument that assesses the functional, English reading skills of adults whose first…

This paper examines whether educational production in secondary school involves joint production among teachers across subjects. In doing so, it also provides insights into the reliability of value-added modeling. Teacher value-added to reading test scores is estimated for four different teacher types: English, math, science, and social studies.…

Education professionals and policy makers have been working to "close the achievement gap" for some time. Differences in school performance for children from diverse and different family backgrounds have been at the core of past and present social, political, and education reform initiatives and practices. Previous research suggests that…

Although institutional researchers devote a great deal of time mining and using student data to fulfill mandatory federal and state reports and analyze institutional effectiveness, financial and personnel information is also necessary for such endeavors. In this article, the authors discuss the challenges that arise from extracting data from…