The New Zealand National Qualifications Framework (NQF) is a new qualifications, credit, and assessment system. This report explores the difference the NQF makes for young people. It is the first report of a longitudinal study that will follow two cohorts of students in seven North Island (New Zealand) high schools to see the impact the NQF has on…

This paper describes: the development and implementation of Schoolwide Projects (SWPs) in the School District of Philadelphia (Pennsylvania); evaluation models permitted by Chapter 1 regulation and policy; ways these models were used in Philadelphia and results that were obtained; and approaches that are sensitive to the effects of SWPs. The…

This report summarizes a follow-up study of the first cohort of 5,500 limited-English-proficient (LEP) students to be mainstreamed in Newark, New Jersey schools using English-language proficiency as the sole criterion for moving from bilingual to regular classrooms. The mainstreamed cohort was compared to regular students using basic achievement…

Changing student demographics in higher education, especially increased numbers of older and/or working students, have inspired experimentation with a variety of class scheduling and degree program formats. This study investigated two such formats: (1) cohort programs (requiring students to take all or nearly all courses together toward a degree)…

The Second Follow-Up Field Test (SFUFT) of the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88) was conducted in 1990 and 1991 by the National Opinion Research Center and the Educational Testing Service. The SFUFT evaluated free response items (FRIs) for possible inclusion in the Second Follow-Up Main Study (SFUMS) and tested survey…

As part of a comprehensive environmental scan prepared by Prince George's Community College (PGCC) in Maryland, this report reviews county population trends and forecasts, county and metropolitan area economic trends and forecasts, and college credit enrollment projections. First, population figures and projections for Prince George's County are…

The National Longitudinal surveys (NLS) of Labor Market Behavior have been conducted by the Center for Human Resource Research at Ohio State University and supported by the Department of Labor since l966. In this paper, data from the fifth and newest NLS cohort, a national cohort of 12,686 youth who were aged 14-21 in 1979, are discussed.…

The primary purpose of this paper is to present evidence of significant differences in the effectiveness of schools serving low-income children; a secondary purpose is to show that one reason why more learning takes place in some classrooms and schools than in others has to do with differences in the effectiveness of teachers due to teaching…

Improved health care and family planning services, reduction in sociogeographic isolation, and increased economic development were found to be responsible for declining fertility rates in a rural Eastern Kentucky county during 1960-1980. Contemporary fertility patterns in an area historically exhibiting one of Appalachia's highest fertility rates…

Historically, alcoholism has been defined as an individual problem, and as a result, family factors have received little attention. During the past decade, however, a new theoretical-methodological perspective has been introduced which draws upon general systems theory for rationale, family theory for substance, and behavioral psychology for…

The few studies concentrating on adult age changes in discrimination shift behavior have reported that the performance of elderly adults on such tasks is inferior to that of younger adults and, in fact, similar to that of children. To determine whether verbal labeling, which has facilitated the performance of young children, would also reduce age…

The study of the same people at several occasions is known by various names: panel studies, multi-wave, multi-variable models, cohort analysis, and gain score analysis. The use of econometric concepts, path analysis, and structural equation analysis to study multi-wave, multi-variable models became widespread in methodological practice in the late…

Retrospective studies of the intellectual performances of children who later became psychotic adults have yielded evidence of early interference in the development of intelligence in future schizophrenics. The intellectual assessments of 153 children were examined during two test periods in the St. Louis Risk Research Project. In 1967-1972, the…

Designed for educational planners and decision makers, this report reviews the principles and methods of demography. The first section discusses demographic rates and measures, including a basic demographic equation, crude rates, cohort measures, parity progression ratio, and life tables. The next three sections examine three demographic factors…

The demographic accounting approach was applied to educational data to trace the movement of individuals among educational states such as different grade levels. Procedures were developed to match individual records on successive years of the Current Population Survey (CPS). Transition rates from one grade to the next were calculated for male and…