At its annual joint board and commission meeting (Washington, DC, November 10-11, 2010), American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) focused attention on college completion by presenting two panel discussions on the completion agenda, followed by breakout sessions in which participants were assigned to focus groups tasked with providing…

As a response to the concerns associated with the allocation of state resources to institutions of higher education, several states have developed budget formulas to derive estimates of the institutional financial requirements. Formulas, however, were developed during a period of rapid growth, and might be unresponsive to institutional needs…

From 1989 until 1998 the U.S. Department of Education administered the National Workplace Literacy Demonstration Program. During that period, over $130 million supported some 300 projects where adult education programs partnered with thousands of businesses, agencies, and organizations to provide work-based skills to employees. While only seven…

A model for analyzing policy impacts is presented that will assist state-level policy makers in education. The model comprises four stages: (1) monitoring, which includes the identification of relevant trends and issues and the development of a data base; (2) forecasting, which uses quantitative and qualitative techniques developed in futures…

The career education resource guide integrates learning activities in basic physics with an exploration of careers in physics or related fields. The guide is keyed to the physics textbooks and laboratory manuals adopted by the Louisiana State Department of Education in 1973. The field of physics is divided into six subject areas: (1) the…

A study to determine the topics considered vital by principals and members of the American Education Finance Association (AEFA) is described in this paper. Questionnaires mailed to two random samples of 61 AEFA members and 181 elementary/secondary principals respectively, yielded 35 returns, a 57 percent response rate, and 113 returns, a 62…

In July 1985, declining state revenues forced Louisiana state legislators to institute a number of layoffs and hiring freezes at postsecondary-level vocational-technical schools in the state and to discontinue the state's policy of paying for the continuing education courses that the state's secondary-level trade and industrial education (T&I)…

A description of the St. Martin Parish French/English bilingual project, one of five such programs in Louisiana, is presented. Now in its fifth year of operation, the St. Martin project serves the rural communities of Breaux Bridge and Parks, in classes from kindergarten through grade 5. Detailed here are the project's policies on staff…

The Louisiana Collaborative for Excellence in the Preparation of Teachers (LaCEPT) was formed to respond to the National Science Foundation (NSF) proposal to implement changes to improve teacher preparation in science and mathematics. The program was designed to encourage improvement in curriculum and instruction in science and mathematics for…

Louisiana's State-Funded Compensatory/Remedial Program requires two different evaluations: a study of the statewide program and local evaluations conducted by the 66 public school systems involved in the program. The State Education Agency (SEA) evaluation unit is responsible for (1) conducting the statewide evaluation and (2) exercising quality…

Concern has grown among black educators about government litigation and administrative proceedings involving state systems of higher education as they relate to equality of educational opportunity. Properly prepared and presented to the courts, these cases can enhance equal educational opportunities by eliminating the continuing effects of past…

Results of a study designed to explore the construct validity of the Change Facilitator Style Questionnaire (CFSQ) as a measure of the aspect of a principal's leadership style that includes leader behavior and combinations of behavior influenced by such things as belief systems, and knowledge and attitudes about leadership. The sample consisted of…

This document contains four symposium papers on assessing employee performance. In "Influence of Liking and Similarity on Multi-rater Proficiency Ratings of Managerial Competencies" (Reid A. Bates), the pattern of correlations identified between raters, independent variables, and different competencies suggests that raters may react…