ethanporcaro/eric-fulltext-meta huggingface dataset:
Developmental Writing Course Redesign: A Systems Approach to Student Writing Success
Author: Wilson, Douglas A.
Date: 2010-00-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Student Writing Models,Writing (Composition),Academic Discourse,Community Colleges,Higher Education,Academic Achievement,Models,Intervention,Writing Instruction,Evaluation

Forced to cope with a growing population of students under-prepared for college writing, a large community college in northern Texas engaged in a transformative redesign of its developmental writing sequence, streamlining two courses, various student support services, and technology applications to boost student success, retention, and performance. This paper presents issues addressed by the redesign and research findings conveying its success. (Contains 1 table.)
Item Transformation for Computer Assisted Language Testing: The Adaptation of the Spanish University Entrance Examination
Author: Laborda, Jesus Garcia
Date: 2010-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,College Entrance Examinations,Computer Assisted Testing,Test Items,Language Tests,Second Language Learning,Test Construction,Classification

Since the Spanish Educational system is changing and promoting the use of online tests, it was necessary to study the transformation of test items in the &quot;Spanish University Entrance Examination&quot; (IB P.A.U.) to diminish the effect of test delivery changes (through its computerization) in order to affect the least the current model. The purpose of this study was to describe and suggest the properties of a new test item taxonomy for the Spanish University Entrance Examination. After a convenient study and piloting by using previous research in computer-based language testing, the researchers created a taxonomy of test items for the I.B. P.A.U. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.) [The study was fully funded by the Ministry of Education of Spain under the PAUER project.]
Active Methodology in the Audiovisual Communication Degree
Author: Gimenez-Lopez, J. L.
Date: 2010-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Audiovisual Communications,Computer Graphics,Academic Degrees,Higher Education,Theory Practice Relationship

The paper describes the adaptation methods of the active methodologies of the new European higher education area in the new Audiovisual Communication degree under the perspective of subjects related to the area of the interactive communication in Europe. The proposed active methodologies have been experimentally implemented into the new academic curricular development of the subjects, leading to a docent adjustment for the professors who currently teach lectures and who have been evaluated for the first time.
Contextual Clues in Semi-Direct Interviews for Computer Assisted Language Testing
Author: Laborda, Jesus Garcia
Date: 2010-00-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,College Entrance Examinations,Computer Assisted Testing,Language Tests,Second Language Learning,Test Construction,Educational Technology,Cues,Context Effect,Interviews

Language testing is a relatively new field of interest that has become of common interest in the last twenty years not only for traditional purposes but because of the power that language testing has acquired in relation to immigration and also for its implications for educational reforms. The purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretical approach to how audiovisual clues help to contextualize the semi-direct interviews in the Spanish University Entrance Examination (P.A.U.) and how contextualization helps to trigger and improve the student's performance. The study suggests the importance of contextualization of speaking tasks and how computers can enhance language testing. (Contains 1 figure and 2 tables.)
Kaqchikel Maya Language Analysis Project
Author: Eddy de Pappa, Sarah
Date: 2010-04-25
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Maya (People),Second Language Learning,Foreign Countries,English (Second Language),Mayan Languages,Interviews,Native Speakers,Educational Resources,Literacy,Cultural Influences,Diachronic Linguistics,Sociolinguistics

The purpose of this analysis was to study the linguistic features of Kaqchikel, a Mayan language currently spoken in Guatemala and increasingly in the United States, in an effort to better prepare teachers of English as a second language (ESL) or English as a foreign language (EFL) to address the distinct needs of a frequently neglected and typically marginalized population of English language learners (ELLs). Raising awareness of a growing population of ELLs, the study provides historical, cultural, socio-political, and linguistic facts and perspectives and includes a personal interview with a native Kaqchikel speaker currently residing in the United States. Information about language origin, structure, development, evolution, and use informs ESL/EFL teachers of the importance of distinguishing speakers of Kaqchikel and other Mayan languages from other Hispanic ELLs. Suggesting a critical approach to English language instruction, the report details &quot;the top five&quot; challenge points for Kaqchikel speakers learning English and includes a list of resources that teachers can use both personally and in the classroom to gain insight into the Kaqchikel/Mayan language and culture and to foster and support literacy and language development. List of books, films, and Web sites is included. (Contains 1 note.)
The Diffusion of Governance Reform in American Public Education: An Event History Analysis of State Takeover and Charter School Laws
Author: Wong, Kenneth K.
Date: 2005-00-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Charter Schools,Elementary Secondary Education,Public Education,Governance,State Government,Politics of Education,Educational Policy,Federal Legislation,Local Government,Change Strategies,Educational Legislation

The political tradition of local school governance predates the existence of the United States. Yet the most prominent mechanisms for the exercise of local discretion have evolved considerably from their colonial origins in response to the changing political climate of the nation, constituent demands, and legislative innovation. Recognizing the distinctive role of local political forces in state education policymaking, this article examines the diffusion of local governance reform as national policymakers redefined the terms of state policy leadership under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Through a discrete event history model using the complementary log-log function and cubic spline representation of time, we test the national influence and ideological distance hypotheses for charter school laws and state takeover reform. Our statistical results show clear differences in the respective number of significant determinants and explanatory power for those predicted relationships within each policy initiative. Appended are: (1) Variable Measurement and Data Sources; and (2) Descriptive Statistics. (Contains 1 figure, 1 table, and 16 notes.)
When Mayors Use School Choice as a Reform Strategy
Author: Wong, Kenneth K.
Date: 2006-00-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Public Officials,City Government,School Choice,Politics of Education,Urban Areas,Urban Population,Racial Factors,Educational Change,Charter Schools

All political scientists who study education policy start their analysis with a similar premise: &quot;educational reform does not take place in political vacuum.&quot; Studies of the politics of school choice have focused primarily on state-level political dynamics. This line of research makes sense since the charter school market is initially created and subsequently altered by the state legislature. In this paper, however, the authors break from this trend and focus their attention on &quot;local&quot; government and the politics of school choice. Specifically, they examine the relationship between school choice and big city mayors. Their preliminary analysis finds that mayoral positions on school choice is influenced not only the existing legislation governing school choice in their city, but also by their city's size and racial composition. (Contains 5 tables and 65 footnotes.)
Another Crossroads? Professional Military Education Two Decades After the Goldwater-Nichols Act and the Skelton Panel. Committee Print 111-4
Author: Fenner, Lorry M.
Date: 2010-04-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Professional Education,Military Personnel,Military Training,Educational Improvement,National Security,Armed Forces,Program Effectiveness,Educational History,Federal Legislation,Competence,Teaching Methods,Curriculum,Administrative Organization,Human Resources,Administrators,Faculty,Financial Support,Ethics

This report examines officer in-residence professional military education (PME) as a critical  investment in the most important element of our military--people. The primary purpose of PME is to develop military officers, throughout their careers, for the rigorous intellectual demands of complex contingencies and major conflicts. This report is divided into five sections of varying length. The first gives the background or context within which the PME institutions operate, including a brief history, estimates of the current and future security environment, and the Department's, CJCS', and the services' PME policies. The next two are the longest sections, which discuss the practical issues the Subcommittee focused on as well as observations, findings, and recommendations. Like the Skelton Panel, the Subcommittee agrees that the Department's PME system is still basically sound. However, there are areas that need improvement. As a means for facilitating improvement, the Subcommittee offers two sets of findings and recommendations: first, those that concentrate on systemic issues and, second, institutional issues or those related to organization and those specifically intended for individual schools, and their leaders, faculty, staff, and students. In this section, leadership and faculty are dealt with at some length. Like the Skelton Panel, this Subcommittee finds that leaders and instructors are the bedrock of the PME system. The fourth section briefly identifies a number of challenging areas of study that remain as well as some individuals whose broader proposals arose in the course of testimony, interviews, current debates, and recent writings. These bear further and more in-depth consideration than could be provided at this time. Finally, a short conclusion provides a nascent vision of the essential attributes of future officers. Professional military education must contribute to developing those attributes. Among the major findings was that today's PME system is basically sound; there are areas, however, that need improvement. The system operates within a dynamic national security environment. Consequently, it must be more prepared to anticipate and adapt to current and future challenges. Appendices include: (1) Glossary of Acronyms; (2) Air University Organizational Charts; (3) Amendment on Copyright; (4) Hearings, Briefings, Travel; and (5) Bibliography. Additional views of Representative Todd R. Platts are also presented herein. (Contains 506 endnotes.) [This publication was written with assistance from Sean McDonald, Drew Walter, Peter Kavanewsky, Ashley Alley, Anne Daugherty Miles, Nate Allen, and Abraham Kanter.]
Cages of Their Own Design: Five Strategies to Help Education Leaders Break Free. Education Outlook No. 1
Author: Hess, Frederick M.
Date: 2010-01-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Elementary Secondary Education,School Administration,Instructional Leadership,Resistance to Change,Attitudes,Barriers,Dismissal (Personnel),Recruitment,Contracts,Collective Bargaining,Resource Allocation,School Culture,Collegiality,Money Management,Educational Change,School Law

The education profession is notorious for its resistance to change. School leaders often claim that collective bargaining agreements, state and federal regulations, and budget concerns prevent them from pursuing effective school reform. The culture of the K-12 leadership environment is one that often seeks consensus over progress and collegiality over accountability. But breakthrough leadership is possible in schools. This &quot;Outlook&quot; offers five strategies to help reform-minded educators step boldly out of self-defeating mind-sets into the turbulence of change. (Contains 20 notes.)
The Numbers We Need: How the Right Metrics Could Improve K-12 Education. Education Outlook. No. 2
Author: Hess, Frederick M.
Date: 2010-02-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Elementary Secondary Education,Educational Improvement,Data Collection,Academic Achievement,Data Analysis,Performance,Decision Making,Politics of Education,Educational Environment,School Culture,Information Technology,Technological Advancement,Time Perspective

Educators lack the data necessary to pinpoint concerns and successes in schools. A focus on collecting student achievement data in the past ten years has increased the amount of information school districts have, but these data are insufficient. Successful organizations use extensive data analysis to guide decisions, but few K-12 districts have the metrics needed to do the same. This &quot;Outlook&quot; outlines several steps that, if implemented, could make data-driven management in education a reality and lays out key measurements districts should collect to make data analysis an effective tool for improving education. (Contains 10 notes.)
&quot;Greenfield Schooling&quot;: How Policymakers Can Cultivate a Garden of Educational Innovation. Education Outlook. No. 3
Author: Hess, Frederick M.
Date: 2010-04-00
Type: Reports - Descriptive
Subjects: Educational Innovation,Educational Change,Charter Schools,School Administration,Educational Environment,Entrepreneurship,School Business Relationship

Reform-minded educators often run into obstacles when they try to bring their innovative ideas to schools modeled on twentieth-century factories. The challenge of &quot;greenfield schooling,&quot; as I write in my new book, &quot;Education Unbound: The Promise and Practice of Greenfield Schooling,&quot; is to cultivate environments that invite entrepreneurial ideas and to provide an infrastructure that allows those ideas to succeed on a wide scale. (Contains 2 endnotes.)
Foxes Watching the Henhouse: How Higher Education&apos;s Voluntary Accountability Systems Miss the Mark. Education Outlook. No. 4
Author: Kelly, Andrew P.
Date: 2010-04-00
Type: Information Analyses
Subjects: Higher Education,Accountability,Consumer Economics,Access to Information,Student Costs,Systems Approach

In his first speech to a joint session of Congress, President Barack Obama lamented America's failure to keep pace with other industrialized nations and challenged the country to regain its mantle as the worldwide leader in postsecondary attainment. Accomplishing this goal requires not only greater access to postsecondary education, but higher levels of college completion. Providing consumers with better information about college costs and quality would help hold postsecondary institutions accountable. Two new voluntary accountability systems miss the mark, however, either by failing to offer new information or by making it difficult for consumers to make comparisons across institutions. A better accountability system would make such comparisons easier and would be mandatory, not voluntary. (Contains 4 figures and 8 notes.)
You Can&apos;t Get There from Here: Five Ways to Clear Roadblocks for College Transfer Students. Education Outlook. No. 5
Author: Smith, Peter P.
Date: 2010-05-00
Type: Opinion Papers
Subjects: College Transfer Students,Transfer Policy,Credits,Paying for College,Time to Degree,Degree Requirements,Goal Orientation,Educational Attainment,College Graduates

Over half of today's college graduates transfer to another school at least once during their academic careers. With each transfer, students pay a &quot;transfer tax,&quot; losing some of the academic credit they have earned due to school policies that make it difficult for students to transfer credits from one institution to another. The net drain on the economy in lost time and money reaches into the billions of dollars. In spite of increasing attention to college costs and completion rates, there has been little action taken to address the issue of academic portability. A simple system could be established to help postsecondary students and institutions navigate the transfer process. This system would grant credit based on students' performance rather than preemptively penalizing them for changing schools. (Contains 12 notes.)
Education Stimulus Watch: Special Report 3. The Full Story on Race to the Top
Author: Smarick, Andy
Date: 2010-03-25
Type: Opinion Papers
Subjects: Elementary Secondary Education,Federal Programs,Educational Change,Politics of Education,Grants,Competition,State Government,Barriers,Success,Program Effectiveness

Over the last year, no education story has garnered more enthusiastic or sustained positive attention than Race to the Top, the $4.35 billion federal program intended to spur and support groundbreaking state-level reforms. The White House called state responses to the competition &quot;overwhelming.&quot; Columnist David Brooks wrote that it was helping to prod a &quot;quiet revolution&quot; in American schooling. The head of one leading education advocacy organization said that it had prompted a &quot;breathtaking&quot; level of state activity, unleashing a &quot;tremendous wave&quot; of reforms. Seeking to build on these accomplishments, the administration recently asked Congress for $1.35 billion for a new Race to the Top grant and based its 2011 budget and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) reauthorization framework around the program's basic features. The consensus is that Race to the Top has been an unmitigated success. Such roseate assessments, however, fail to account for the numerous and high hurdles standing in the way of the program's ultimate success. Using multiple examples, particularly from the state level, this report chronicles and analyzes these obstacles, including the application's shortcomings, states' ulterior motives, the limited number of states making substantial policy changes, the weakness of many proposals, strenuous political opposition, and major implementation challenges. This report concludes that declarations of the Race to the Top's revolutionary impact are both premature and drastically inflated. Federal officials should reassess their overly optimistic view of the program and its theory of action and modify their strategies for ensuring that it accomplishes its mission. (Contains 115 endnotes.) [To view &quot;Education Stimulus Watch: Special Report 1&quot;, see ED509613. To view &quot;Education Stimulus Watch: Special Report 2&quot;, see ED509614.]
The Attrition Tradition in American Higher Education: Connecting Past and Present. Working Paper 2010-01
Author: Thelin, John R.
Date: 2010-04-20
Type: Opinion Papers
Subjects: Higher Education,Educational Attainment,Academic Degrees,Graduation Rate,Student Attrition,Educational History,Data Analysis

In July 2009, President Barack Obama set out a bold higher education agenda for his administration and promised that the U.S. would once again lead the world in college degree attainment. Given the nation's current level of college completion, it is reasonable to wonder whether such ambitions are feasible. While there is a sense that the country needs to recreate the &quot;Golden Age&quot; of American higher education, where high completion rates were the norm, few have bothered to ask whether this era was actually as golden as the conventional wisdom would suggest. In one of the few efforts to examine this question, John R. Thelin, research professor at the Education Policy Studies School at the University of Kentucky and author of &quot;A History of American Higher Education&quot; (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), reevaluates the idyllic image of university life in an earlier period and uncovers the historical roots of America's &quot;attrition tradition.&quot; Thelin finds that not only did university students often drop out at a high rate in the early 1900s, but also that college attrition was largely ignored until the last few decades. If we are to tackle the challenge of raising graduation rates in an era of increased access--a strikingly modern goal--it will require fine-grained, institution-level analysis, Thelin argues, in addition to significant investments in improved data systems for America's colleges and universities. Using detailed cohort tracking data and a seasoned historical perspective on the origins of today's &quot;war on attrition,&quot; this AEI working paper should give pause to ambitious completion promises and prod university leaders to reflect on their own performance data to map a better course for serving students. As Thelin notes, without an accurate sense of how far we have come in our higher education aspirations--and how difficult and costly it has been to get there--we cannot strategically plot the road ahead. (Contains 1 figure, and 39 endnotes.)
Runaway and Homeless Youth Grants: Improvements Needed in the Grant Award Process. Report to Congressional Committees. GAO-10-335
Author: Brown, Kay E.
Date: 2010-05-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Youth,Runaways,Homeless People,Outreach Programs,Federal Programs,Program Evaluation,Evaluation Criteria,Public Agencies,Accountability,Grants,Guidance,Technical Assistance

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) awards grants to provide shelter and services to runaway and homeless youth through the Basic Center, Transitional Living and Street Outreach Programs. In response to a mandate for a review of the grant award process for these programs in the Reconnecting Homeless Youth Act of 2008 (Pub. L. No. 110-378), GAO examined (1) grant announcements and application requirements, (2) technical assistance for grant applicants, (3) how grant award decisions are made, and (4) notification of grant award decisions. GAO reviewed requirements, documents, and records associated with this process for fiscal years 2007 and 2008, observed the grant evaluation portion of this process, and interviewed applicants, peer reviewers, and agency officials. HHS should take steps to ensure a fair and transparent award process, including clarifying evaluation criteria; selecting better qualified reviewers; better documenting agency guidance to reviewers and its rationale for grant decisions; and providing this rationale to applicants in a timely manner. HHS agreed to improve its process in response to all of GAO's recommendations except the ones related to clarifying evaluation criteria and better documenting agency guidance to reviewers. Three appendices are included: (1) Administration for Children and Families' Notification Letters to Grant Applicants; (2) Comments from the Department of Health and Human Services' Administration for Children and Families; and (3) GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments. (Contains 4 tables, 5 figures and 17 footnotes.)