This article examines how the states plan to implement the Programs of Study (POS) that were mandated by the 2006 reauthorization of the federal legislation for career and technical education. A coding system was developed for summarizing the methods described in the plans of all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, and the Virgin Islands.…

The need to improve the success rate of students in South African universities is widely regarded as a national priority. Measuring this success is, however, more difficult. Although the NPHE sets some benchmarks for system performance, there is currently no indicator set for longitudinal student performance. This article reports on a study done…

To meet the special needs of and provide quality health care to nursing home residents, the health care workforce must be knowledgeable about the aging process. Health professionals are minimally prepared in their academic programs to care for older adults, and few programs have required rotations in geriatrics. Teaching nursing homes (TNHs) have…

This study compared elementary and special education teachers' knowledge of when K-3 students develop key reading competencies, their knowledge of who is responsible for teaching K-3 students key reading competencies, and teachers' perceptions of their own instructionally relevant competencies to those standards articulated within their state's…

Over the past decade higher education reforms in most European countries have been oriented towards creating a European Higher Education Area which is envisaged in the "Bologna Declaration." Based on an illustration of a variety of difficulties encountered higher education institutions in a wide range of participating countries, this…

Forsyth County Schools has recently finished a very successful year. In 2008, all 16 elementary schools and eight middle schools made Adequate Yearly Progress. In spite of the fact that Georgia administered new, more rigorous math assessments for grades 3-5 and grade 8, the district had an average of 22% more students passing the assessments than…

This study describes the multifaceted components of an assessment process. The paper explains a novel approach in which an advisory council participated in a "fun," hands-on activity to rank-order learning outcomes. The top ranked learning competency, as identified by the advisory council, was the need for students to gain a better…

This article critically explores how a new form of European Union (EU) governance--the open method of coordination (OMC)--impinges on education policies. The first part discusses three key characteristics of the OMC, in particular its flexibility, reflexivity and reliance on the techniques of new public management. It also outlines briefly why the…

The paper intends to contribute to the debate on ranking and league tables by adopting a critical approach to ranking methodologies from the point of view of a university benchmarking exercise. The absence of a strict benchmarking exercise in the ranking process has been, in the opinion of the author, one of the major problems encountered in the…

Last fall, Saint Louis University participated in St. Louis, Missouri's, first Human Capital Performance Study alongside several of the region's largest for-profit employers. The university also participated this year in the benchmarking of employee engagement factors conducted by the St. Louis Business Journal in its effort to quantify and select…

New Mexico Mathematics Content Standards, Benchmarks, and Performance Standards identify what students should know and be able to do across all grade levels, forming a spiraling framework in the sense that many skills, once introduced, develop over time. While the Performance Standards are set forth at grade-specific levels, they do not exist as…

Education for All has focused international attention on the goals of universal primary education and improved education quality. However, national indicators related to these goals often mask significant differences among demographic and social groups, as well as among geographical regions within countries. This paper, based on a study…

In a 2004 interview with the late Everett Rogers, author of the book "Diffusion of Innovation", Rogers lamented that in 1963, he and other members of a prominent research group expected to solve the remaining international development problems and end poverty within ten to fifteen years. Now, forty-five years hence, it is time for a "reality…

This article compares 2 fluency-based assessments of letter sound knowledge: letter sound fluency and nonsense word fluency (NWF). Ninety-one children were administered both assessments 5 times during the second half of kindergarten. The assessments were comparable for concurrent and predictive criterion-related validity at single points. The…

Recent theoretical developments in the field of absolute identification have stressed differences between relative and absolute processes, that is, whether stimulus magnitudes are judged relative to a shorter term context provided by recently presented stimuli or a longer term context provided by the entire set of stimuli. The authors developed a…