According to the author, the Association for Business Communication (ABC), the premiere professional organization for those who teach business communication, has long neglected and marginalized those who teach at two-year colleges, as has the discipline of business communications as a whole. The best method to determine how ABC could better meet…

Assessment in higher education is no longer the purview of a few campus research professionals, nor is it just what happens at the end of a course or program. Institutions are in fact now looking to assess many of their processes and procedures at nearly every step, and for that purpose some are turning to an approach known as "benchmarking." A…

Information is provided to document the need and possible uses for a community center at the Community College of Allegheny County (CCAC). The paper describes a community center as a multi-purpose facility planned and administered cooperatively by the college and community to provide recreational and educational services for the constituencies the…

In response to J. J. Cannell's (1988) discussion of the reported "above average" achievement of the vast majority of public school systems nationwide, the nature of national norms is discussed. The public must be better informed about the interpretation of test results. (SLD)

A study of the labor market for college graduates in Australia is examined and evaluated, and its implications for curriculum and administrative planning in higher education are discussed. It is concluded that such data collection should be widely undertaken in the future. (MSE)

Presents a portrait of adult literacy in Illinois based on the results of the State Adult Literacy Survey conducted in 1992 as part of the National Adult Literacy Survey. Highlights include age differences; foreign-born individuals; effects of education and training; employment, economic status, and civic responsibility; and language use.…

Based on an acceptance speech given by the author upon receiving the Catholic Library Association's 1995 Certificate of Merit Award, this article discusses surveying teenagers, reviews what teenagers want from school librarians, and offers ways to serve teenagers better. (JMV)

The director of a high school gifted education program discusses the transition from high school to college and reports on a survey of 97 gifted students four years after high school graduation. The survey addressed challenges and adjustments in the transition to college, whether students' high abilities were perceived as assets or liabilities,…

Numerous state impact studies show that school libraries improve student achievement and standardized test scores, yet that fact is insufficient to keep financially strapped districts from closing their libraries. Teacher-librarians must be proactive and gather data at the school-site level to demonstrate how valuable they are to students and…

In our previous "At Last" essay, "The "Problem" of English Learners: Constructing Genres of Difference" (Gutierrez & Orellana, 2006), we identified a predictable genre that characterizes much research on English Learners. We noted how the genre may unwittingly perpetuate deficit constructions and keep us from identifying other issues for…

An ideal system of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), from the local school district perspective, must follow several principles based on the 1985 Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing: (1) Testing must be viewed by teachers and students as worthwhile. (2) Test results must be presented in a timely and useful…

The data collection program of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) should be designed for maximum reliability, validity, and manageability for all involved organizations. An adequate number of school districts should be sampled to produce useful data. Data should be more comparable between states if proper sampling techniques are…

A survey of absentee voting in the Highline (Washington) School District revealed that mailed-in ballots have no better than--and often less than--a 50-50 chance of favoring school finance issues. School officials should reconsider encouraging the growth of voting by mail. (IW)

A collection of quotations drawn from research and opinion papers dealing with the impact of television viewing on children. Subtopics addressed are: television viewing statistics, effects of television violence, and the relationship of television to education. (JJD)

Six stages are hypothesized that define the behavior of returning mailed questionnaires: receiving the questionnaire, opening the mail, forming an overall impression, answering the questions, returning the questionnaire, and dealing with nonrespondents. The researcher must provide incentives at each stage if potential respondents are to complete a…