While literacy interventions can be implemented in any grade, focusing on interventions in grades 3-8 is critical because it is often the best chance for students identified with earlier reading deficiencies to become ready for the literacy demands of postsecondary education and careers. States in both the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL)…

This article features the Sanchez Elementary School located in the Mission District in San Francisco, California. Every child at Sanchez School has the opportunity to develop a healthy identity fostering social, emotional, physical, and intellectual competencies. Children's identity and associated competencies are explored in a variety of learning…

The portrait of the American college senior is a mix of economic pressures and shifting choices. Understanding that the senior year represents another critical transition point for college students, many U.S. colleges and universities are taking intentional steps to help students bring closure to their collegiate experience and accomplish the…

This article focuses on understanding successful Latina/o college student retention at 4-year institutions. Deficit models fail to consider how Latina/o students use different forms of capital (i.e., social, cultural, economic, and human) in earning a degree. Using data from the UCLA's Cooperative Institutional Research Program, factors associated…

Institutions that have organized and centralized their data enjoy an obvious advantage in grappling with strategic planning and other issues. As the drumbeat for accountability, planning, and demonstrating effectiveness to internal and external stakeholders intensifies, the stature and importance of institutional research offices on most campuses…

The work of a committee of college institutional researchers to create a professional code of ethics is chronicled, and the code's structure is described briefly. Issues encountered in and assumptions underlying the effort are discussed, including the rationale for such a code, definition of technical standards, terminology, and scope. (MSE)

A comprehensive information resource management system is the key to the future of quality data management. Instituting and developing the system requires a major commitment from institutional leadership. The institutional researcher can take steps to solve some of the initial problems and increase institutional awareness for the systems'…

Although each higher education institutional research office has a unique style and mission, their commonalities suggest guidelines for establishing effective units, including placement high in the organizational structure, consistent attention given to first-order data responsibilities (collection, reporting), attention to institutional needs, a…

Policy analysis is a two-stage process of (1) diagnosing the problem and (2) unraveling the parts in it played by the policy issue, environment, factors affecting implementation, and proposed alternatives. In higher education, this requires a thorough understanding of the unique higher education environment. (MSE)

The Ethical Analysis Protocol is a set of questions on treatment of participants, research practices, and sociopolitical dimensions of research that can be used to elicit information about ethical assumptions, constraints, and implications of institutional research studies. They provide a framework for ethical analysis of an institutional research…

In this article, the president of the National Association of Industrial and Technical Teacher Educators (NAITTE) responds to Charles Gagel's 2006 article recapping and comparing the 1993 and 2004 surveys of NAITTE membership. As they contemplate both of these surveys, she urges members to ask themselves a few questions: What are the…

A study was conducted to determine whether alumni who were previous scholarship recipients were more likely to pledge financial assistance to their alma mater than were alumni who were not financially assisted. A total of 140 alumni were to be contacted through a regular phonathon, with a special script for the 70 previous scholarship recipients.…

The structure and process of college institutional research is compared with three different ways in which science is conceptualized. It is concluded that, although institutional research has much in common with science, it is distinct because the dynamic nature of institutional research prevents development of a cohesive body of knowledge.…

A member of the Association for Institutional Research's Committee on Standards and Ethics Research reflects on the recently drafted code of ethics for the profession and suggests means to support practitioners and gain acceptance for the code. It is concluded that sanctions are not practical at present. (Author/MSE)

Useful reference material and a list of professional associations are provided for the institutional researcher interested in qualitative research. (MSE)