In December of 2004, media outlets across the country were abuzz with news of the just-released results of the latest Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) tests. Once again despite highly publicized efforts to reform American math education over the past two decades, the United States did little better than average. Taken…

The Primary Reading Program was initiated in 117 classrooms in 40 North Carolina schools, to improve the reading achievement of the primary school students. The same number of control classrooms were also selected for comparison. Features of the program included increased funding for instructional materials; use of volunteers and teacher aides for…

The Penn Manor CRT/Curriculum Articulation Project was designed to study the impact of the implementation of four specific interventions on the achievement of elementary school students in mathematics and language arts. The interventions were as follows: (1) classroom teachers were given individual curriculum skill objectives for their grade…

Concern over reports that North Carolina elementary school students performed below the national norms in reading achievement led to the establishment of a pilot program to improve reading skills in grades one through three. The Primary Reading Program was initiated in 117 classrooms in 40 schools throughout the state; 117 control classrooms from…

This study, part of a larger effort to develop a methodology for evaluating intelligent computer systems (Artificial Intelligence Systems), explores the use of benchmarking as an evaluation technique. Benchmarking means comparing the performance of intelligent computer systems with human performance on the same task. Benchmarking in evaluation has…