Following the lead of Xerox and Ford, U.S. industry is embracing benchmarking as fundamental to quality improvement efforts. Schools can adopt this practice by comparing themselves to the best schools. The first steps are selecting specific improvement areas and identifying model schools for comparison. Visionary leadership is essential. (MLH)

Summarizes federal and state actions regarding national standards and describes two private groups: the College Board and its partner the Educational Testing Service; and the New Standards Project, a joint effort of the National Center on Education and the Economy and the Learning Research and Development Center. (MLF)

Cautions that Year 3 and Year 5 Literacy Benchmarks, which set minimum literacy and numeracy standards for all Australian students, can measure but cannot transform student outcomes. Calls upon English professionals to put forth constructive suggestions for effective teaching methods that will enable students to reach the required goals. (NH)

Preschool and kindergarten teachers can help young learners meet early literacy standards without sacrificing developmentally appropriate practice. Several professional associations have described appropriate expectations for children of different age levels known as milestones, developmental accomplishments, and benchmarks. (MLH)

The master of management program at Cornell University focused on competency-based development of skills for the hospitality industry through core courses, minicourses, skill benchmarking, and continuous improvement. Benefits include a shift in the teacher role to advocate/coach, increased information sharing, student satisfaction, and clear…

Offers case studies of best training practices in leading companies (AEtna, Andersen Worldwide, Boeing, Digital Equipment, Tektronix, Texas Instruments, Allstate, and Sprint), elected by the Benchmarking Forum of the American Society for Training and Development. The practices are technology based and performance oriented and herald common…

Addresses the problem of benchmarking image browsers. Existence of different search paradigms for image browsers makes it difficult to compare them. Currently, the only admissible evaluation method involves conducting large-scale user studies. An automatic image browser benchmark is proposed that uses structured text annotation of the image…

Demand for well-qualified health care professionals (including pharmacists) is projected to increase over the next 10 to 20 years. In many jurisdictions, immigration will become an increasingly important human resource to replace aging, retiring workers and drive ongoing economic prosperity and growth. Higher education has been an underutilized…

The National Community College Benchmark Project (NCCBP) provides community colleges with a system to report data on key learning outcomes and indicators of institutional effectiveness and to compare their data with national norms and data from selected peer institutions. This chapter describes the development, current features, and anticipated…

The introduction of subject benchmarking led to fears of increased external intervention in the activities of universities and a more restrictive view of institutional autonomy, accompanied by an undermining of the academic profession, particularly through the perceived threat of the introduction of a national curriculum for higher education. For…

What is the impact of an academic library consortium on the perceptions of library services experienced by users of the member institutions' libraries? What is the impact of an academic library consortium on the perceptions of library services experienced by users of the member institutions libraries? In 2002 and 2003, OhioLINK (Ohio's consortium…

A strategic planning model for colleges and universities is presented which integrates competitive benchmarking and an adaptation of Hill's manufacturing strategy model. Hill's model is altered to focus on student-winners and is used to design programs of study and supporting services. Benchmarking is used as a key component of the planning…

Budget pressures compel everyone in higher education to demonstrate value in IT investments, using both quantitative and qualitative information. Like many institutions, however, both Stanford and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have found themselves forced to rely more on anecdotes than on management information to guide decisions. In…

This is the first in a series of articles that address the use of educational indicators to inform policy. The aim of the series is to provide an in-depth discussion of a single indicator or set of educational indicators from a data-user perspective. Each article will present the most recent cross-national comparisons and provide practical…

The Colorado Model Content Standards for Science specify what all students should know and be able to do in science as a result of their school studies. Specific expectations are given for students completing grades K-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12. Five standards outline the essential level of science knowledge and skills needed by Colorado citizens to…